Essential guitar tone techniques
- Choose the right guitar for the right sound. If you want a rounder sound go with a Telecaster, if you want a sharper sound use something like a Gibson SG. Just choose the appropriate guitar/amp combination for the type of sound you want.
- Instead of relying on fixing it later, get the sound right before you press record. Adjust settings on your amp, petals, and guitar to get it as close as possible to the sound you want. Great mixes start with great recordings.
- Mic choice is essential. The Shure sm57 is a great common choice, but don’t be afraid to experiment with different mics, it’s whatever gets the right sound.
- Mic placement is essential. Maybe it sounds good when you stand up in front of your amp, but that’s not where your mic will be. When placing the mic, turn down the amp and listen with your ear in front of the speaker and move around to find where the best sound is coming from. Adjust your mic from there to get it just right.
-Solid state amps suck, it’s a bad sound. Get a good tube amp.
- If you are double tracking guitars, turn the distortion down a bit, otherwise things can start to get too fuzzy.
-Turn it up as loud as you can, especially if you are going for crunch, get them tubes workin’.
- Use new strings, change them about once a week, more if you play a whole lot. The only time I can think that older strings would be good is if you want something like an acoustic guitar way in the back of the mix as a kind of shaker instrument.
- You can get some good sounds from amp modeling software, but nothing beats a real amp in a real room with a real mic. Always go for the real thing if you’ve got it.
- Play around with room placement of the source. It’s usually good to get your amp off the ground and away from the wall, although you might find that you get good sound in a certain corner of your room.
- Try adding a room mic if you want a little room sound. It may be better than some reverb.
- Trust your ears.