Getting A Better Guitar Tone Part 1

Electric guitars are the corner stone of rock music. Heck, electric guitars are a major part of most music today. Chances are if you are a songwriter or musician and you are into producing your own music, you are going to want to have electric guitars in your mix at some point. But how do you get a good guitar tone? When you hear the pro mixes their guitars sound huge, in your face, and punchy. How do you get that sound for yourself?


Today I'm going to start a three part series sharing some ways that can help you. This isn't a "quick fix" or a magic technique that will revolutionize your guitar tone. Those don't really exist. Hard work is the core in all of these. However, the tips I will share will be some things I've learned that have helped me get one step closer to a better guitar tone. Let's start shall we?

Record Direct or Miking an Amp?

The first issue you will probably run into when wanting to record electric guitar is this: do you record by miking your amp, or go direct and use an amp modeler of some sort? There isn't a universal rule here, and it will really depend on your situation. The best advice I can give here is to try it out. Stick a microphone on your amp and see what it sounds like recorded. Don't like it? Switch over to direct and use Guitar Rig or something like that and see what you think. The point is to try different things and see what works for you.

You also want to ask yourself whether or not you want effects before or after recording. If you use effects on the electric guitar before recording, you might get a more accurate tone to what you like, but then you can't really control it later. Recording direct is good for adding effects like distortion, reverb, etc., later in the mix. However, if you've got a nice clean tube amp and a good room, then miking might be the way to go. 

Use Saturation to Add Bite 

Sometimes when mixing electric guitars, we REALLY want the guitars to punch through and have energy and bite. Often times this "bite" is found in the higher EQ frequencies. You'll find, however, that when you start boosting those high frequencies you get a real harsh tone that can be weak sounding and painful on the ears. So how do you get the crispness and bite without the harsh and brittle sound? 

The answer is saturation. Saturation plugins will help you add that nice high end sound while retaining a warm tonality. You'll have to tweak with the plugin to find the exact setting that you like, but I think you'll find that it helps a good bit. If you don't have a good saturation plugin, Massey has free plugins that just simply don't save your settings unless you buy them. All you need to do here is write down where your plugin settings are and reset them reset them when you come back, or support the company and buy their plugin! Here is a link to the Tape Head plugin by Massey. Massey Tape Head Saturation

This concludes part one. In the next part we will talk about using compression, why you shouldn't solo, and doubling your guitars. See you then!