Scooped rhythm guitars

[gnoll]

What do people here think about relatively scooped sounding rhythm guitars?

I'm sort of a believer in this. I know there is this mantra of "you can't scoop mids on guitars, that's for beginners" but I feel like it depends on what you want the guitars to do. I like it when rhythm guitars sound huge and kind of fill everything out in a mix but at the same time leave space for leads, keys, vocals etc. I think of it as the guitars being sort of liquid, and flowing around everything without taking over.

To me it makes sense and I Iike the sound. What do you think?

 

[Mprinsje]

The more I record myself and sometimes other bands, the more I go for kind of a scooped sound (not extremely scooped, mind you). It leaves more space for vocals and lead guitars, and is just in general a more pleasant sound to my ears than the middy honkjob that modern metal productions are.

However, live I will use more mids than recording, because I like to hear myself and the other guitarist in my band uses an Orange, which has a lot of mids, so I'm completely drowned out if I scoop mine.

 

[Kosthrash]

I like to pushing mids by using an overdrive (sd1) or lately a distortion pedal as a booster (Rocktron metal planet) before the amp, then scooping mids with the amp's tonestack (or even better when I'm not lazy with an eq pedal in the fx loop) and I really love this tone...

 

[FearComplex]

Nothing at all wrong with scooped guitars in my opinion. I personally don't care for the modern mid-heavy guitar sound, find it fatiguing and flat / 2 dimensional sounding. A bass with that modern grinding Darkglass tone supports scooped guitars in an awesome way.

The 'don't scoop the mids' mantra made more sense to me back in the day when the bass occupied only the low end and offered no major midrange presence in the mix, so if you wanted guitars with fat lows you kind of had to go the And Justice For All route and bury the bass. Today, Jason through a darkglass would have cut through just fine alongside those guitars.

 

[Chri]

All the best recorded heavy guitar sounds are at least a little scooped. Even Periphery, who was infamous for the "djent" sound because Misha and co. seemed to dime the mids on the Axe for the first album have gotten almost progressively more and more scooped from album to album since then.

Now there's also a huge difference in have a nice, but still "modern" scooped tone, and then purposely going in the opposite direction like Defeated Sanity. Both serve their purpose and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Scoop those mids and make your guitars sound pissed off like they're supposed to.

 

[Kosthrash]

Just google "Mesa Boogie" & almost 99% of the pics are with v-shaped graphic eq

 

[SalsaWood]

It depends on the tone and context.

Most producers will just bump it back up anyways and you're making their job harder for no good reason.

Live it's a great way to make room for the rest of the band, if the sound guy doesn't just bump it back up anyways and you're making their job harder for no good reason.

Neither of those tones will sound ideal within the other context regardless of the mid levels. You want to balance your EQ by subtracting as little as possible to get your ideal tone, so somebody just saying "scoop the mids" isn't helpful. Nine times out of ten your amp is getting run through a console and it's a good idea to not choke it of mid freqs (which is the main spectrum of your sound).

 

[penguin_316]

Scoop the mids, mids at 11:00 on a clock. Less is more, most amps need little or no mids removal. Ducking them slightly does have benefits of fitting in a mix though.

I go by each guitar and amp on an individual basis, there is no one set formula that will always work.

 

[4Eyes]

Just google "Mesa Boogie" & almost 99% of the pics are with v-shaped graphic eq

Yeah...and I believe this where the "don't scoop the mids" mantra begun. Because what works on mid heavey Mark series amps, doesn't necessary have to work with other amps.

But in general, use yor ears, if guitars sound boxy in the mix, it's usually mids which need scooping.

 

[ExMachina]

If it ain't scooped it's poop.

I'm a big fan of dipping down between 200 and 1k, with the minimum around 500-750. I find it really fatiguing when that area is boosted tbh.

 

[Crungy]

I'll have to remember that motto!

 

[mpexus]

Basically all 90's Death Metal was heavily scooped guitars. Those Bands all sounded different and had their own style. Not like the cookie cutter crap of today's all sound the same bands with their shitty tone of harsh guitars...

 

[GunpointMetal]

Whatever fits the sound is right move. When it comes to tracking amps it's a lot harder to put something back in that to cut something out, so I'd probably leave the mids a little boosted, maybe even higher than I think sounds right, just to not back myself into a corner later trying to find frequencies in the guitar that I didn't record.

 

[jephjacques]

mids are for prog nerds and guitar center employees

 

[Lechmere]

For me, it's always a reduction at 300, 400, 500, and sometimes 700-800 if I'm hearing too much cocked wah "cawk" coming through. I guess the results would be considered mildly scoopy sounding, but that's what usually sounds best to me.

As for the origins of the Mid Mantra, I seem to remember way back in like 2005? 2007? that that was the default reply, more mids, to every tone related question on that old Andy Sneap forum. Basically, make everything you do sound like Messhugah's Chaossphere and you'll be golden, that seemed to be the answer to everything.

 

[Kosthrash]

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[Sylim]

bottom line what works, works. if scooping the mids works, scoop away. personally i find scooped tones more exciting and interesting. mid focused tones can be kind of behaved and just sit neatly in their place in the mix. scooped mids when done right can melt your face off.

 

[gnoll]

Yeah I agree it's always a question of what works and also creating some sort of balance. But I do find myself pulling down ~500 on guitars while I don't like scooping for example drums as much as some do. Can't stand scooped clicky kicks.

But it might also be middy v30s giving the illusion of scooping more because there's already a lot there to begin with.

And I grew up loving Metallica tones and Rammstein ca Mutter so that might be why also.

 

[Drew]

What do people here think about relatively scooped sounding rhythm guitars?

I'm sort of a believer in this. I know there is this mantra of "you can't scoop mids on guitars, that's for beginners" but I feel like it depends on what you want the guitars to do. I like it when rhythm guitars sound huge and kind of fill everything out in a mix but at the same time leave space for leads, keys, vocals etc. I think of it as the guitars being sort of liquid, and flowing around everything without taking over.

To me it makes sense and I Iike the sound. What do you think?

I mean, my pet theory on this has always been that this is entirely a byproduct of where amp technology was, and what was the norm for a beginner, around the time the internet really got going.

I'm dating myself a little hre, but my first amp was some sort of Crate combo, something like a GX-30R or 15R or whatnot. Small, solid state, and had reverb. Objectively it probably kinda sounded like shit... but, it was capable of producing a LOT of gain, in a small package, at low volumes, and had fairly effective EQ.

When I was first learning how to play electric guitar, in the... early-mid 90s, I guess? Whenever it was, I think a lot of tips and tricks spread by word of mouth, and i definitely remember jamming with a buddy in a friend's basement who had either the same or very similar amp, and at one point he said, "hey, try this," and cranked the mids down to 0, with the gain up at max or high. And, it sounded fucking EVIL.

So, I think you had a lot of people who had heard records and heavy recorded tones, and had similar little solid state practice amps with high gain preamps, and at some point most of us had a friend show them that if you scooped the mids, it sounded really fucking heavy.

Flash forward into the internet and the early days of computer home recording, when everyone was using these really evil sounding settings, and getting fizzy, washed out, indistinct sounding guitar sounds in their recordings. So, what did everyone tell them do do?

"Don't scoop the mids!"
"Turn the gain down, less is more!"

And, naturally, while that was pretty good advice for the specific problem, you also had people with much larger platforms than "showing your buddy down the street this cool amp setting" thanks to the internet, and they all had these two tips that were really good for their specific situation, and had helped them get MUCH better recordings... so naturally they told anyone who would listen on the internet, and suddenly a whole bunch of people were all saying similar things, so this just became common knowledge. You want a good recorded tone? Turn down your gain, and don't scoop the mids.

Problem is, that's a solution for a specific problem. It's still not bad advice - often times lower gain tracks, double tracked, DO sound unexpectedly "big," because they have more impact thanks to a bit more dynamics. And, the guitar IS a midrange instrument. It needs some midrange, and if you suck all of the midrange out of it, you're left with the guitar equivalent of white noise.

But it's definitely something that can be taken too far.

I tend to use a little less midrange in rhythm tracks, maybe a little bit less at the amp, but will take a little bit more out in the mix as well (a Neve-style EQ is great for this, btw, that 700hz filter point is really, really great for this), and then for the lead tracks boost here a little bit at the same point, which both helps separate the two, and gives a little more of a vocal thickness to the leads. Gain, I guess I go by feel. If you're not brand new to multi-track recording, you'll probably have a sense of where you want your gain levels to be. Preamp gain is probably a bit of a trade-off between "chug" and "snarl," and punch and impact, and erring on one side or the other (or layering a lower and higher gain track) depending on what you're looking for can make a lot of sense.

But I think the whole thing was a very specific response to a very specific problem, that happened to come at the point in time when people were turning to the internet for recording tips, and quickly became "common knowledge."

 

[kamello]

Yeah...and I believe this where the "don't scoop the mids" mantra begun. Because what works on mid heavey Mark series amps, doesn't necessary have to work with other amps.

But in general, use yor ears, if guitars sound boxy in the mix, it's usually mids which need scooping.

this!

scooping a Marshall JCM gives a completely different vibe than scooping a 5150, to give another example.

Personally, I mostly play/produce modern metal, but I agree that the honk fest of some newer productions is a bit tiresome. In my case I tend to use the typical 5150/Recto OS/57 setup (how original right?!) leaving the amp almost flat and doing small cuts (2-3 db's with pretty low Q's) around 400 hz, IMO that really helps with the low mids clarity, giving the tone a more agressive character and more room for the bass