I wondered the other day how many of you have tried guitar plug-ins or just going direct into the computer, and how satisfied you were with the tone you got.

Tone on computer is not always an easy thing to acquire. Some plug-ins sound great. But to me, most of the time, the people raving about guitar plug-ins are more producers that are finding a tone that will work with their projects, but not folks that are using the plug-in as their main guitar tone for a guitar project. I could be wrong.

See, I don't think you can change physics. The sound you get out of 2x12's or 4x12's, that air movement, the speaker compression, the room sound, the mic choice, and mic placement are critical to getting YOUR SOUND.

Now, having said all of that, let's decide that we don't have the room, the mic, or the amp (or at least the room to crank an amp up in). So the choices are to go direct with either your pedal board, or a guitar processor, or to use a software amp.

Going direct with a pedalboard, or guitar processor: This is going to sound radically different than running through your amp.

If you have some good mic pre's to warm up the sound with, that would be a good thing. If not, then a change in EQ is the next best thing.

One of the big advantages is that where you were probably mostly mono in your guitar rig, now's a chance to go stereo. Use both outputs of that guitar processor, or chorus, or delay.This alone will help get a bigger sound.

The connection coming from your pedalboard will more than likely be a 1/4" jack. Which is NOT a mic input. Use the Hi-Z 1/4" inputs on your computer interface. What needs to happen in this process is to literally compensate for the missing amplifier section and speaker of your amp. Which is no small task.

How much of that was crucial to your tone. In this case a little comparison will send you a long way. Hook up the pedalboard to your amp as normal, but have the cables to the computer at the ready. Play a sound through your amp a few times to get the sound in your ears, then plug it in to the computer and listen for the differences. Try to use the EQ to adjust for what you're not hearing, or to take away what you're hearing too much of.

Be aware that most guitar amps top out at about 8kHz. And your computer, and associated monitors are full bandwith (up to 22kHz). That, in and of itself can create a false sound of too much high end. So maybe the first order of business is to use a low pass filter with the frequency set to 8kHz.

So let's take a listen. I tracked a rhythm guitar part with no EQ straight out of a guitar processor into Apple Logic.

Then I used an EQ to roll off the highs and lows of the full range system. Here's a screen shot.

Now Listen to the Audio.

Then to give the guitar a little life I added a couple of dB at 2.2kHz, and pulled a little at 200Hz. Take a look at the screen shot.

And here's the audio…

So while these are wide brush strokes to get the point across, (I haven't even considered the rest of the mix.) If you listen to the difference between the first audio example and the third, I think you'll hear quite a difference.

The same approach can be used if you're coming out of the back of an amp's direct out, or loop output. It's a matter of tracking it, then applying these guitar amp characteristics to the track. Some processors have speaker emulation in them already. You can use that, and see if that works better for you.

Software guitar processors are usually a little more ahead of the curve on this sort of thing as this is what they're designed to do. If you like the sound that they give, fine, go with it. Lots of times people go with the software sound over a real amp, or processors. The benefit of this process is being able to record the track dry as regular guitar (sometimes even while hearing a distorted sound play), then be able to run the guitar through the software after the fact. This gives you many producing options as to what tone you really want to end up with. This can be particularly handy when recording a guitarist, and not having to spend a lot of time trying to find the tone at the top end of the session. Here, the part gets played, then later on your own time you can experiment with a world of possibilities.

The important thing to remember is that tone is tone, and most of it is in your hands. The rest is electronics. This can be compensated for in a lot of ways. For us computer guitarists, audio path (cables, interfaces, mic pre's etc) is my first point of attack, then EQ is a close second. Finally plug-ins and software. To me if you're using software to fix the sound, it might be better to START with a better sound. Just a thought… Have a great month.

makintrax@philgates.com
http://www.philgates.com