How Can I Get These Two 80's Guitar Tones?

Trent_Reznor

Hello everyone. I've been having a lot of trouble with vintage guitar tones using Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Some guitars in 80's music are big and crunchy sounding, and a lot of them are oddly thin but still very shreddylike they've been high passed or band passed...
Does anyone know or remember what I used on these demos for Pretty Hate Machine? I'm shooting for something like this, but doesn't have to be exact.

1:01:

1:33, 3:56:

Also, are the grinding noise guitar effects just a pick scrape in Sunglasses at Night?

V8

Trent_Reznor oddly thin but still very shreddylike they've been high passed or band passed...

80's metal was usually 'mid-scooped' - boost treble and bass, cut the mid's - you'll know when you've got it when the palm muted bits are chuggy and the rest sounds brittle 😃

NI Guitar Rig is a good tool to get NiN tones, though it's been forever since I've used it (I had 4, then upgraded to 5).

What I see a lot of peeps reccomending is layering - one track with the 'standard' tone (Amp, distortion, cab, delay/reverb) and a 2nd (and/or more layers) with some waveshaping/synth-y tools/plugin's. Also you'll find the thinner tones probably arn't using cab sim's (or IR's).

Trent_Reznor

Thank you for your reply. Okay, mid-scooped. I was also told by one of my audio engineering teachers that 2500Hz was really typical to get crunch in the 80's.

I've known about layering for rock and metal, but what kind of waveshaping or synth-like tools? I've otherwise heard of layering synths, but that's more experimental.
I'll consider getting an amp to get a naturally thin or soft tone as I do have a standard guitar microphone.

These examples in particular sound very thin to me which I find peculiar... I wonder if it's particually because he put the guitar in a reverb and didn't want it to sound muddy in the mix... He struck a low C or something in the first example but it sounds high passed up to like 150Hz or possibly 200hz...

V8

Trent_Reznor These examples in particular sound very thin to me which I find peculiar...

Try a distorted tone without a cab/IR in NI - guitar distortion sounds wimpy when DI'ed. OR if you are gonna mic up a amp/cab keep the mic fairly far from the speaker. It's the opposite of what most guitarists are seeking, but Trent isn't most guitarists.

He definitely could have used high pass filters or a bunch of other trickery (he's well known for doing) to achieve a similar effect. It's just about using the tools you've got to get the results you want/like.

I'm a fan of layering because you can then blend things until you get the sound you like - without losing anything along the way. E.g. I'll have a couple tracks of guitar (amps, cabs, etc..), then duplicate those tracks and start adding/subtracting bits in the signal chain in the duplicates. It's been a loooong time since I messed w/Guitar Rig though 🤷‍♂️

Trent_Reznor

Thank you for your opinion. I think you're on to something with guitar and simulators lacking shreddiness and noisiness in their distortion. I only think I'll keep using guitar rig for modern metalcore. I just got IK Multinedia's Tonex recently and it looks very promising. It's very new and the Amos sound very different; thin amps, scooped sounding amps, soft and flat amps, etc. I think their Orange cabinet and a few others are my beat bet, combined with a high pass filter and maybe even boosting the box range just to make it sound extra boxy and resonant like a real speaker cabinet. You're right I mean, it's up to your ears at the end of the day. Would also be very fun to experiment with an actual cabinet.