ezietsman
The 50 Best Tones reminded me on how subjective tone is. We all have our favourite tones and tones we can't stand. This got me thinking (where's the aspirin?).
Hypothetical situation:
You play in a band with another guitar player. You both went through lots of trouble finding (and funding) gear that gives you that awesome tone you like so much.
The problem is, the two guitar players' tones clash horribly and sounds really bad together.
The easy answer to this is to "find a happy medium".
Is there anything specifically you will do (or have done) to improve the guitar sound of the band as a whole?
AlanRatcliffe
Push mids on one guitar, pull them on the other and turn down drive a notch on both.
MikeM
Ah. That was simpler than expected. (Not in a bad way)
aja
If I understand correctly:
The guitar is a mid-heavy instrument yet people always turn down the mids - this means that the guitars will get lost in the mix and compete against each other. In a band situation, you want the mids to come through, but, at the same time the guitars should have different mid levels to sound different to each other.
Then, solo play tends to require more drive but in a band you lose your note definition. So, to cut through you need to clean it up (single coils perhaps?) in order to get more definition out of your playing. More loudness/gain wont help at all, just create more noise...
right? ???
AlanRatcliffe
My explanation above was a bit simplistic. The biggest problem I see with two guitar bands is duplication of equipment, guitars and settings, making both players sound the same. The technique above is a quick fix for that situation. With different guitars and gear you'd have to experiment a bit more to find what works, but the theory is the same - clearing frequency space in the sound of one guitar to make space for the other and vice versa. If you work with a sound guy, he'll often do a lot of the heavy lifting as he has more control over EQ (another good reason to keep stage volumes down and let the PA handle more).
Guitars are mid-heavy, but so is voice. They all compete. The mids make something stand out, but if everything is all mids, things get muddy and everything gets lost - that's why we generally tend to cut back on mids a bit - to leave space for the voice. Boosting mids helps you stand out for solos.
Playing with two guitars tends to naturally give you a heavier feel (as does playing louder when playing live), so you can lighten up on the drive for more clarity, while retaining the same kind of impact (if not more). Listen to Zeppelin - a lot of the heavy sounding riffs are layered guitars which would be considered almost clean by today's standards.
