Guitar Tips: Balancing Volume And Tone

Hi everyone looking for guitars that understand tone
I came across this link

Guitar Tips: Balancing Volume And Tone

https://www.proaudioland.com/news/guitar-tips-volume-and-tone/

Now I donot have a real amp especially in my one bedroom apartment

So I have a amp modeler

I have questions maybe other guitar players can help

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I can help!!
Guitar is one of my favourite things to include as it’s my first instrument and what got me inspired.

Electric guitar
In terms of tone I would say it starts with the guitar… some may say the amp but tbh it’s actually the pickups.
A rough guide to pickups:

*Single - bright yet warm tone, quieter and pokey in the upper mids (1000hz). Have a small hum that adds character but can also be a limitation.

*Double - warmer, not as much top end (usually), pokey around 300 and 2k. No hum (humbucked)

*P90 - a blend of both, great for jazz. Basically a single on steroids… has less high end than typical single usually.

These set the foundation of the type of sound your amp will give back.

In a mix i say that it’s better to pick the guitar type that will fill the right bandwidth and won’t mask the other instruments as much.

Always record the same part twice with electric guitar. Pan hard left and right and use two slightly different amps… or use the same amp and mix up the cab. This gets you a lovely wide sound.

Guitars get muddy around 200 and 850ish hz.

acoustic guitar
Record in stereo. Harmonics over 12 fret and one slightly off the sound hole so it’s not too boomy (xy figuration works great). Pan 20’ each side. Low pass at 120 and high shelf works well, take out some upper mids if in a dense mix and take out a bit of 200hz just like the electric guitar.

Unless it’s a guitar driven piece try and keep the parts mega simple. When layering is also suggest playing in a different position. The goal with guitar is to create as much variation in the sound as possible without leaving the overall feel/mood of the piece.

In terms of effects:

Verb - abbey roads works great for clarity. I never do anything different these days as guitar just gets muddy.

Compression - slowish attack, mid release, 3-1 ratio and a moderate amount of comp added is a good place to start for most tracks. A fast attack and release with a ratio of 1-2 is also good for natural live sounding pieces.

Delay - I sometimes use it for single note or single chord stuff, but I roll a lot of top and bottom off the repeats so it sounds more analog.

Hope this was helpful man!

;D

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Thanks Geoffrey
Yes very help may have some question sorry not new to guitar but very new to get basic balance core tone

For Electric Guitar
I using a hss kind of fender strat with nose less pickups
This way I can use single and hum

The modeling amp
Fractal axe 2

The actually pickups
I am not sure

Could please go into more depth on this and how I use this or applies this?
When you said pick the guitar type that would fill the right bandwidth

Noiseless pickups are usually still single coil unless it’s a double coil that can be split which I’m guessing it’s not if it’s a fender strat. Unless they’re upgraded pickups.

Modelling amps are good but I’d use a few different types for different genres. I personally prefer to use a real amp. Smaller amps are best for recording I find. They sit better in the mix. I use a vox ac10-12 which is really nice. It’s not loud at all so you can crank it and get some lovely overdrive without deafening yourself as it’s all tube/valve.

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I do like real amps as well I have a small vox that very clean sound to start with but over here at this apartment I cannot use it
So I do miss that vox

But this modeling amp I got on sale many a few years back
Does have a pretty good tube amp feel
there are so many parameters to dial in You tone
Just been trying to understand how to set some parameters in the way to simulate my vox
I been not well as of lately so I been working on guitar tone

I am looking to get to different tones
How do You get that
Stratocaster’s in-between pickup switch settings as “out of phase", tone?