It’s all trial and error, so you should work with whatever sound that you like. For the lead sections, you may want to turn up your treble or play around with the middle knob. For example, for heavy metal, you may want more bass for the rhythm sections. You should also play around with the EQ settings.
Metal Guitar Eq Settings Software And HardwareIs a national retail and internet company providing a wide variety of high-quality woodworking and metalworking machinery.I am sharing in this post my basic knowledge and practices on EQ’ing metal/distorted guitar tone, mainly for standalone practice and when using software and hardware impulse response loaders (Mooer Radar or Torpedo CAB M/Wall of Sound).SPOILER ALERT : if you are already experienced with EQ, you will probably not learn any new or incredible EQ tips in this post, as I rather try to avoid using too much EQ tweaks □ IntroductionTo get started with the topic, let’s remind that your overdrive pedal -if you use one- and guitar amp or preamp pedal settings are the first and major components that will shape the tone you get. Test these EQ settings (classical Rock curve) that pretty much elevate everything besides the mid frequencies and enjoy your Rock songs like there’s no tomorrow:Grizzly Industrial, Inc. Rock is one of the top genres and it focuses a lot on low-frequency sounds as well as high-frequency sounds made by electric guitars, etc.Eq’ing with overdrive and amp tone stacks is often a trade off : for example, you can raise the bass on the amp to get presence in the low register, but you may suffer of more boominess in your overall tone, even if your OD can can come to the rescue and help in limiting or counter balancing this….To further tweak your sound in this real world setup, using a parametric or a multi bands eq in the guitar amp FX loop can help…. Overdrive pedals and amp tone stacks have a certain range of action and use certain shapes : they may be different from one amp to another amp (different frequency bands and widths for bass and treble for example, amps with depth controls versus no depth control…). EQ’ing with IRs allows for additional -potentially finer- adjustments with more bands and more EQ shapes compared to simply using a real amp and a real cab (I am not talking about recording here, as in this case you will be able to apply additional EQ either at recording time or after recording, in your DAW for example).IR EQ is applied at the very end of the signal path they take place after the cab and the microphone, in a similar way to an actual cabinet recording.A semi-parametric EQ will omit some of these parameters -for instance Q could be a fixed value-. In this first post dedicated to equalization, we will discuss basic EQ techniques with EQs such as the ones you get with the Mooer Radar pedal, the Two-Notes CAB M or the Wall Of Sound plugin, which are parametric or semi-parametric embedded EQs.The Two-Notes and Mooer IR loaders pedal embed EQ capabiiltiesNote : a parametric EQ allows you to select frequency bands centers, apply gain correction and let you adjust the Q factor, which impacts the width of the EQ correction. With a DAW, using plugins, you can access advanced EQ techniques : EQ plugins are countless and can be extremely powerful, using many parameters and shapes. EQs and IRsThe EQ capabilities depend on the IR loading device you use : a hardware based IR loader or a software based IR loader. Is is similar to the process of applying EQ to a recorded guitar tone : Recording adds EQ processing capabilitiesUsing IRs, you often get this capability directly with your IR loading device :Some overdrive or amp settings tweaks will not impact the signal the same way that EQ’ing at IRs level does: overdrive and amps sit earlier in the signal chain… For instance, an overdrive pedal behaves -for one part- a little bit like an HPF (High Pass Filter) but it takes place very early in the signal chain and is applied to only a part of your signal : your pickup output. Standard tunings may require that you to beef-up your low end to get those big shake-the-walls palm mutes, while down tuned Meshuggah-like riffs will probably send you in a different direction, as in this case you will probably be cutting strong bass resonances that would otherwise drown your low notes into the mud… (Metal) guitar EQ : frequency rangesLet’s define some EQ bands in order to be able to describe and discuss the impact of EQ changes. While the techniques can be similar, the tone changes and choices will slightly vary between standalone situations and mix situations, or from a loud live sound to a mix.Eventually, you will adjust your settings from one listening device to the other if it is a standalone guitar sound (ie clear headphones versus boomy monitors, small room versus large room, loud FRFR speaker…etc) : the behavior of your speakers have their importance and even « neutral » monitors or FRFR speakers color your sound.… Your pickups, guitar tuning, your amp and even your music style will come into play : hard rock power chords will make you go in a tone direction that will be very different from fast and technical metal. You also apply your changes using a specific listening device. Each time you use an EQ, you do this in a context : for example a standalone guitar tone versus a guitar tone in a mix. Context and intent !Let’s focus on standalone, distorted guitar sounds in this post. With too much lows (for example huge 120 HZ peaks), this section might overtake the whole tone with a masking effect, or produce an unbalanced tone, where you lack definition and articulation. Lows : critical for metal guitars, adjusting this will have a strong impact on your tone (metal guitar tone rely heavily on this frequency range) : usually adjusted on the low end part by using a HPF, which will allow the bass to be cleaner and better perceived. When using small or bright speakers you may also ignore it as the speaker may filter this by not really being able to reproduce this low frequency range Sub-lows : you will probably get only rumble and resonance here, most of the time metal guitar players will get rid of this or slightly diminish these frequencies by using a HPF. Too much mids will result in a boxy sound. Mids : « upper body » of the tone. Too thin and you will probably be missing definition and articulation, too important you will start noticing a « woody » or boxy effect. Low-Mids : this is where the body of the guitar takes place. A lot of guitar speakers see their frequency responses dropping severely after 5, 6 or 7 kHz. Presence/air : this area may or may not be an issue. You’ll start hearing hiss and ice-picking effects when this section is too loud. Bell, shelf, HPF, LPFThe most common EQ corrections are the following : Adjust the power-amp simulation settings if I use one, as this can have a massive impact on the tone balanceThen, eventually, I’d start applying some IR EQ tweaks. Adjust my amp or pedals settings (amp EQ, presence, gain) Give a try to another IR of the same speaker / mic with a different position or settings if too bright, dark or scooped, if such a different position/setting is available Often reduced by using either a low-pass filter or a high-shelf.Before trying to EQ anything on IRs, I usually try to perform these steps to get into the tone area that suits my purpose : Its own frequency response) as well as the recording position that was used. The Wall Of Sound documentation describe the low frequency (120 Hz) and high frequency (6 kHz) as being shelve filters. Shelf : used often at the extreme of the sound spectrum with low-shelf and high-shelfIf not indicated otherwise, these EQ use classical bell shapes or LPF and HPF. Most EQs apply their gain changes with this shape Using shelves at the extreme of the EQ device make sense as you probably want to treat the whole beginning or remaining of the frequency band with the same setting.Altering the tone with EQ settings has an impact on the overall volume : you will often need to compensate the volume changes by adjusting the master volume of the IR loader, up or down.
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