I received a wonderful workflow suggestion for recording electric guitar from our friend Jeff Hazen — so I wanted to share it! I imagine this will be extremely useful for some people.
Heya! I'm catching up on some of the advice from Jamie's list. The ones on muddy guitar tone are great, and IMO there's one more tip that's super useful, if you're using at least a moderate amount of gain in your guitar tone (and the more gain you need, the more it will help).
If the guitar tone is muddy / flubby, but the end result that I'm looking for includes some low-mids or even bass-range frequencies, the thing I do is to use two separate EQs (one or both can be pedals, part of an amp sim, FX plugins, etc., depending on your signal chain).
The technique I use is to set the first EQ (before the guitar's gain stage) to dramatically reduce bass and low-mids — 240Hz and below. (And I might also possibly boost mid frequencies, around 750Hz).
Then check your gain stage (whether it's an amp sim, a physical amp, etc.) to make sure that any EQ controls in your amp (virtual or physical) are relatively flat, or at least don't boost the bass before the preamp section of the amp.
(Feel free to adjust treble as you'd like, but be aware that adding treble before the gain stage can increase fizziness with some types of amplifiers.)
Your post-gain EQ should then boost the bass back up (and possibly the treble as well) until you're happy with the overall EQ curve.
Distorted bass frequencies often lead to "muddy bass", so by reducing the amount of lower frequencies pre-gain, they won't be out of control as they make their way through the gain boost. Then you can bump the low frequencies back up at the end until you're happy with the overall sound.
Related: this is the reason so many Mesa/Boogie Mark II+/III/IV/V/VII control panels that you can see in videos have the knobs for bass turned down (the EQ knobs affect the pre-gain EQ), and the 5-band graphic EQ sliders (which affect the EQ post-gain) are often in the shape of a "V," even for guitar tones that have a pronounced mid hump.
Even the official Mesa website pic has the EQ controls set the way Jeff describes!
Of course, you can also use a pedal that has a built-in EQ curve to it. Ibanez / Maxon Tube Screamer is the classic example, which pairs extremely well with amps that have a lot of bass response — hence why ['Humbucker-equipped guitar' → Tubescreamer → Marshall amp] has been such a popular combination over the years — but there are plenty of others available that will apply an EQ shape to your tone as well as adding gain (some even have a graphic EQ as a part of the pedal, like the Rockaway Archer).
And then there are other pedals that do all of the above for you (eq-gain-eq), e.g., the Analogman King of Tone (if you like getting your gain from a pedal), its various more-obtainable clones, and a few other similarly-engineered pedals as well (though most pedals that do all of this for you are not inexpensive).
Some amps have this kind of control available as well (e.g., the aforementioned Mesa/Boogie Mark series, etc).
EQing the guitar pre- and post-gain stage in this way makes it easier for noobs like me to attempt to mix things and still get the kind of guitar tone we're shooting for. Hopefully this helps somebody out! -- Jeff
I have to say … for a self-described “noob,” Jeff sure is knowledgeable. 🏆 Thanks Jeff for sharing your valuable insights! — jamie
