Need help with guitar tone problems

[Adam Ranellone]

Recording

I’ve been casually playing guitar and writing and recording songs for ~6 years now and I’ve always had issues with my guitar recordings which at this point is driving me to my whits end. My guitars are always incredibly hot when recording and always sound flubby and flat with no clarity at all. They sound terrible and always have this horrible hiss at around 3-5k. I have used pod farm, lepou, amplitude and bias amp sims with and without many different IRs. I’ve bought many things that I thought would correct the problem and nothing has. I would really like to get some decent guitar tones and I feel like I’m missing something here. Even when I watch videos on YouTube and follows directions exactly my tone sounds completely different than theirs. I copied instructions step for step and when they have really clear really powerful distorted guitars I have a tone that is an incoherent mess with no ability to discern separate notes from one another.

I am going for a more metalcore/djent sound like like moths to flames, wage war, periphery and the like.

This problem has also persisted across several different moves and computer builds. I feel like something is introducing a lot of extra noise into the system. Is it interference from my pickups? Is it my cables? Is it my interface? I can’t figure it out.

Here is my setup:
Guitars:
7 string Schecter Damien Elite 7 with EMG 81/85
ESP viper 1000 with EMG 81/85
Squier strat with stock pickups

Passive DI Box:
Radial Engineering R8001010JDI Single- Channel Passive Direct Box with Jensen Transformer

Interface:
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6

DAW:
Cubase 10

Monitors:
M-Audio BX5 monitors

Computer:
Windows 10 Pro
Intel core i7-9700k coffee lake 8-core 3.6 GHz
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4
WD Blue 3D 500GB SS HD
GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS PRO LGA 1151

Please help me. Not being able to get a decent guitar tone is preventing me from wanting to play and record and it’s driving me crazy.

thank you!

 

[spicevam]

Your setup sounds fine. Maybe send a recording of some kind over so it's easier to identify the problem?

For the record though I think copying settings straight from YT tutorials is a bad idea because it will probably almost never end up sounding the same due to different guitar, pickups etc. You might wanna apply some general tips but other than that nah.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Upload an example of your tone and upload a DI of the ESP.

 

[Adam Ranellone]

I just created some different audio tracks with different amp sims that I use and DIs. No quantizing or editing, no EQ either. I just want to see if there really is some extra gain being thrown into my system somewhere. I appreciate all the help!

Everything was recorded with my ESP Viper 1000 with EMG 81/85s in Drop C. I took off all gates or EQs that I normally use to try to fix the tone. I want to start from the basics. I find that I always have to add gates, EQs, compressors, and the like to try to get a good sound and I want to be able to get a good sound with just a preamp and amp like I see so many others being able to accomplish.

All tracks were recorded once and copy pasted so there was a 100% panned R and 100% panned L track.

The Bias track is running a Tube Screamer split into a Peavey 5150 and Mesa Dual Rectifier.

The Ninja track is running NaLex Ninja Amp sim with Joey Sturgis Mesa Boogie cab IR. I just started playing with Ninja since I watched a video on youtube where the guy gets an amazing tone with it.

I am not able to put links in my comments yet but they can be found on my soundcloud under the name neurodjent. Thanks so much!

 

[Selkoid]

I don't see any tracks uploaded to that profile on soundcloud, make sure they aren't set to private.

 

[Adam Ranellone]

Sorry about that. I just reuploaded them and they should be able to be viewed.

 

[nickgray]

https://soundcloud.com/user-236020446

Yeah dude, your sounds suck, no way around it.

First of all, some of your processed guitar tones sound like the have DI guitars mixed with them. You need to figure out proper signal routing. Read the manual for your audio interface, and refer to the Cubases' manual to figure out how to properly route and monitor the signal. You have expensive equipment - you need to learn how to use it.

Second, tune your guitar, it's really out of tune, you can't possibly get a good tone if your guitar is out of tune.

There's no easy way of saying this, but your playing is just not very good. You have to work on your technique. Bad guitar playing automatically equals bad tone, you can't fix that with any gear.

With your amped tracks, you're using WAAAAAAAAY the hell too much gain, just absurd amounts of gain. Dial the gain all the way down and turn it up as low as you possibly can get away with. Not the other way around.

With regards to your DI tone, I'm not 100% sure. You do have a DI box, so you shouldn't get any impedance mismatch issues that cause high end roll off, but your DI tones do sound as if the tone knob was rolled a bit or something.

With regards to recording guitars, set your project to record 24-bit audio (again, refer to Cubases' manual), and record the guitars so that they peak at around -10dbfs (that is, set the gain on your sound card's preamp so that you see peaks around this value when you play), something like that. You absolutely should not record as hot as possible, this is a mistake.

That being said, you also have a lot of noise on your DI tracks. I'm not sure 100% of the reason, but try this - crank the gain and move the guitar around the room, try moving the guitar's pickups near your computer. Pickups are also antennas, so they'll pick up all that crap that electrical appliances emit. It's probably coming from your PC, it's normal, and there's not much you can do about it other than moving the guitar away from the EMI source.

Another bit of advice: use reference tracks. Find songs that you like that have solo guitar parts (i.e. only guitars are playing), isolate one channel of the track (DO NOT SUM TO MONO, if you sum to mono you're summing both L+R channels which were double tracked), and save it somewhere. Do this a few times, string all those snippets together, and use this as a reference for building tones. Forget presets, forget tutorials (well, by and large, you probably would benefit a bit from some still), etc., because this way you're actually referencing professionally mixed (if they were, that is) tracks. Similarly, use reference tracks for mixing.

Finally, here's a quick 5 minute tinkering with your DI tone (Mercuriall 808 -> Emissary -> Ownhammer Mesa 4x12 V30 SM57 (some IR, I dunno) -> a tiny bit of reverb:

https://vocaroo.com/1fbTcEoo8sxY

Hopefully you can hear just how horribly out of tune your guitar is, plus uneven playing (sorry dude, but you gotta work on the technique).

 

[shnizzle]

in addition to what nickgray says, it sounds like you´re using the neck pickup. if that´s the case, use the bridge pickup for rhythm guitars. also don´t just record once and then copy the track to pan both left and right. you´ll end up with mono again because both sides play back an identical signal. you have to record twice. the slight differences in both recordings is what gives you the wide stereo sound.

 

[Adam Ranellone]

I appreciate all the help! It looks like I have some work to do and I’m going to start practicing harder, reset the intonation on my guitars, set up some reference tracks and get to work. I have definitely neglected my playing for the past 4 years due to school but I’m committed to it again. I hope to be able to come back in short time with a better tone. Thanks again for all of the help!