Getting the Right Guitar Sound

I spent some time today trying to get right guitar sound again. I moved the amp into the loft so I could hear the monitors more clearly in my "studio" :). Didn't do as much good as I had hoped so I did some work with the Digitech PR150 amp modeler and sending the sound direct to the deck. Better luck there. With technology today it is much easier sometimes to go direct. Yes, you do lose some of the power sound from the live amp crunch. But, there is so much tweaking you can do with the modeler settings that the time saved can be significant.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about placing the guitar in the correct frequency range when I track. Using the equalizer correctly is really important here. A big mistake a lot of home recording engineers like me make is to not separate the individual frequency ranges of the instruments. That makes for a really muddy and unprofessional sound.

When you listen to really well engineered recordings, you can pick out every instrument and what they are playing. It sounds great, huh? Anyway, here is a really basic chart I use to get the process in the right direction from the beginning. Click on the chart to see a bigger one so you can read the freq ranges.

Playing and recording is fun. And, playing the engineer role is too. I will need someone soon to listen to what I am doing in rough to see if it sucks, but for now it is fun.

This is where you all come in. I want to place clips online and get feedback, too. My fans are my greatest (hopefully friendly) critics and I want to know what you think. Stay tuned for some Sped up Tunes.


Oh, and don't forget my book. It's cheap and a fast and funny read. You will get something out of it for sure.

Click on the book to see what it's all about. Thanks much Speedsters.