What's wrong with my tone?

Gear
#1

I’ve been playing around with Fortin Nameless plugin, as I bought it recently and slowly learn using it properly.
And I must say I love the tones I am getting…
… until I record myself:

That’s four tracks of the same riff in two octaves, plus some midi bass.

It’s not that I don’t like this particular tone, on the contrary - I find it quite good to be honest, much, much better than what I was getting with free stuff, but I was looking for something sligthtly different.

I used some basic EQ, low cut at around 100Hz, low cut at around 6kHz, some notch at 4kHz.
I also might have done very mild and wide-ish cut at around 250Hz, and maybe, just maybe very slight boost at around 1kHz.

Whenever I move high cut any lower than 8-ish kHz tone gets dull, but if I don’t then there is a very nasty static-y noise in my tone. Seriously, if I did not put the high pass where it is it would bite my head right off.
I was trying to hunt down those nasty whistles and noises and notch them out as to not compromise on the tone, also there seems to be something going on with mids muddying the bulk of the tone. Or it’s my ears that are playing tricks on me?

Anyways - I didn’t save the project (silly me), so I just ran the file through an eq doing nothing and did a screen capture showing how it looks like:

image
image1920×1080 268 KB

Now, to the question at hand - what did I do wrong, and how to get my tone to be slightly more… pronounced without sacrificing high end? And how to ger more of a grit and body to the tone?

#2

I tend to low pass as low as 5k and then boost with a 1Q bell as low as 2k

1 Like
#3

Is it a 6dB cut or 12dB? Or something else?
Because if I used anything steeper than 12dB @ 5kHz I would kill the top end instantly.

#4

Mad steep, 24db I think. Could just be my amps have more content around that area to carry the high end compared to what you’re using, my point is I low pass until the fizz / nastiness goes away, then bring back the “nice” high end with a bell boost

#5

I must definitely try this approach. Only I wanted the fizz to stay, just not as lound and nasty, just a hint of it.

Also, what’s surprising to me is that when I’m playing the tone is really decent, without that unbearable top end. As soon as I’m done recording and see how it went, the hiss overshadows the tone and it gets mushy too.

1 Like
#6

If you want even more control, you can stack low passes. So say a 6db low pass pretty low, 12 a bit higher, 24 much higher to kill the really high bad stuff. I like this approach more for bass personally but it works on guitar too.

Sounds like you need to focus on more high mids to fix this

#7

Yeah, the question is - what exactly should I do with them? If I try to boost them the tone gets honky.

#8

Is the clip here with the 8khz low pass, or without?

Also, is there any way you can get some drum tracks going here? Worst case I’d be happy to load up a simple blast beat type groove in a Superior 3 preset and shoot over a couple bars you could try tracking agains, but my experience has always been “high end fizz” sounds fucking awful in solo’d guitar tracks, even doible tracked like this, but under a wash of cymbals or hi-hats gets obscured and what instead cuts through is something much more pleasant, using the term of course relatively for metal rhythm, lol.

This could definitely be signalchain, mix, and tone dependent, but if I get much below 7khz or so I’m getting dangerously close to “dull” territory. I suspect I run my core uneffected tone a little on the dark side though.

1 Like
#9

In the soundclip I posted it was around 6kHz but with 12dB step I think, so anything between 5-8kHz was barely affected.
Also like I mentioned there could have been a wide boost ranging from 1kHz to 2kHz, but I can’t remember now. I was a little frantic with engaging and disengaging some eq points.

Yeah, I just suck at writing drums and I wanted to just send this to my bandmates quickly. My drummer usually has solid ideas for his parts.

You got me there, I usually forget it needs to sit in context of the mix.
I’m pretty much always surprised by raw guitars when checking out Mix Academy on yt.

#10

Agreed with.

You also need a bass track, the same track di’d, copy it. Mix one as is, clean, compressed, thumping bass sound. The second track, throw on fuzz or overdrive, really saturate it, almost to the point that it’s not defined. Tuck that under the other bass track in terms of level. Mix it open until you can tell the note that is being played, but it sounds like a gnarly dog.

Put that in the mix with your guitars, and you will find the mix is much closer to what you are hearing in your head. Also in terms of songwriting, after seeing Carcass live, the bass works much better live when it’s just playing the root of the chords locked in with the kick. I’ve seen hundreds of death metal bands live and played in more than I can remember, as fun as it is to all shred together, the bass muddies the mix if its not holding down the bass note. It also gives space to all of the other instruments. When done correctly, like Carcass, the bass drum and bass guitar, almost makes it sound like the kick is tuned to the moving chords. IMO of course.

#11

That, and also only after hearing it on headphones did I notice the bass is too loud as it is. Doesn’t matter though this time as it was not a serious recording, just something to keep in mind.

That would actually be black metal, and tbh the bass is following the guitars playing the root note.
The guitars do something like this:

-9-9-9-9-
-5-5-5-5-
-7-7-7-7-

One is in C#, the other is in F# playing exact same chords, just one octave lower, so they both play C# power chord with stacked fifth (or is it ninth actually), and moving this up and down.
Bass follows playing just root (C# or whatever chord it is in progression at the moment).

So, to recap - I should ease off the high cut and distort doubled bass, then bring it somewhere down in the mix, right?
Also, I find that there is something wrong with the way I mix in general, looking at my last cover there is something not cool around the mids, muddying the tone:

And that is a free ampsim as opposed to the clip from the first post (NaLex Amplex vs NDSP Fortin Nameless).
Given that guitars were also different it must be my fault.

#12

…though, those are all things that taken together could definitely explain why you’re unhappy with your tone here. I’m not pointing these things out to be critical or anything, nut just to say that fi you’re going to compare your tone to a finished recording, it’s awfully hard to audition it when you’re listening to it in such a different context.