Эпидемия (Epidemiya in translit), which means "Epidemic" is infamous Russian power metal band most well known for ripoffs and derivative material. '2001 is not their best album, many riffs are openly "borrowed" from Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys and everything else is mostly taken from other bands either. Most songs aren't memorable, the album consists of second-rate musical material. But what attracted me to this otherwise forgettable album are sonics. They managed to achieve "cheap but cool" sound in contrast with similar european/american/etc bands of these times, to raise the bets even higher mastering on this album is unusual, it's not smashed/clipped at all. No loudness war, in short. It has crest factor and dynamics, punchy as hell despite poor triggered drum samples. This album is pleasant on ears even cranked very loud, even in spite of phasy digital highs (from ProTools EQ used at 44.1 kHz I guess). What interests me is distortion on rhythm guitar (short clip attached to the post). Sounds like not amp distortion, but pedal(s). Don't know which pedal does that "stardust" sound, any ideas? That gtr sound is exactly "cheap but cool", by the way playing itself is fine, I can feel the guitarrero touching strings so unlike usual gridded and layered to death synth-like chugga-chugga. I even can hear DYNAMICS in guitar playing partially thanks to the "no loundess war" mastering. UPD: Attach seems don't working, so I've used no wait filehosts instead. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7sAkpTcae6qXzlkcURUSG9taUU/view?usp=sharing https://yadi.sk/d/uY_RBDmmjiz4C Last edited: Oct 14, 2015
Tried and heard several pedals, shitty and not so, they make a different sort of distortion, not in this vein. Distorted, yep, but without this "stardust" effect. Any particular pedal recommendations? Sure some of them are better for similar effect than the rest.
I don't really know what you are talking about. Are you referring to the guitar being double-tracked and counter-panned? Is that what you mean with "stardust effect"? Lol. Yes, the sound is "thin" and "shitty sounding" (alot of upper harmonics). Is that what you mean with "stardust effect"? If not, you might consider choice of guitar, gauge, what kind of pickups you use (single coil or humbuckers), playing technique, cables, pedals, amp, pre-amp gain, speakers, amp/cabinet mic(s), processing, etc. Start with an MXR distortion+, Proco Rat or an Ibanez tubescreamer.
Thought a clip was enough, rhtyhm guitar which is very prominent, unmistakable pedal distortion with that "zzz" sound, like some sort of fuzz or similar pedal. Yep, thin, but it's hard to tell if the pedal itself is that phasey or this is due to non-oversampled digital EQ from ProTools wihtout listening to original tracks before mixing and mastering. Tried several pedals with different sorts of distortion, fuzz was the most alike, but quite different style of "zzz". Rat gave more amp-like hard rock distortion. Sounded good but not in that style. I'm sure that several ways of achieving that sort of gtr sound exist and it's possible to do much better (not that cheap sounding, less phasey, better highs) that on subj album. I don't have MXR distortion+ around, can borrow Ibanez tubescreamer and try, thanks for the tips. P.S. About pedals in general, they usually act as a hipass and does not have a good phase response either. Low end gets removed from gtr and high end becomes messy even with pedal bypassed. Every damn pedal I've tested had this "thing" except Rat which has quite good phase response and leaves low end intact. This becomes expeptionally tedious when combining different pedals, phase response becomes a royal mess + forget about low end. Lot of pedals = phasy gtr sound usually. Last edited: Oct 16, 2015
