Just wondering your preferences on guitar sounds.Scooped is realy aggressive and paint peeling,yet the mid boosted sounds of early to mid 80's thrash/death albums I can hear the notes better.

I myself like a combination of paint peeling treble with some mids in threr too.

I like mine setup with bass 8 or 9, mid about 4, and treble on 6 or thereabouts!

It sounds immense

thrash metal maniac wrote:I like mine setup with bass 8 or 9, mid about 4, and treble on 6 or thereabouts!

It sounds immense

That's a horrible sound!

I have Bass on 2, Mid on 7 and High/Treble on 8. That's a cool sound.

for nearly everything heavy i will put up the bass till it makes the sound a lot fatter. scoop out a bit of the mid (Although not absolutely completely out) and turn up the trebble for presence and note clarity. scoop like a motherfucker!!

the only time i dont scoop out the mids, and instead turn them up is when i am playing bluesy stuff or for maidenesq sound (not very often, only when i'm fucking aboot).

Boost it all the way to 10.

Cut through everything else!

usually go for about bass 7, mid 5, treble 9, sounds pretty good on any pre-amp, pedal or amp; although for some pickups (especially if youre going for a smoother tone) a boost works better than a cut

Mids are ESSENTIAL in my opinion.

Too many guitarists play with their bass (that's what bassists are for) and mids the wrong way round, my settings are like:

Bass - 2
Mids - 8.5
Treble 7

Gain - 7 at the absolute maximum

/\ Thats more like what I like /\

Question to all you bass lovers, do you not find that everything gets super-muddy when your playing with a full band? Do you play with 2 guitars on similar settings like that?

I cant imagine it coming out as anything but a flabby mess...

I like the punch and cleanliness of a high mids sound, and I like to roll back on the gain aswell, again sounds better recorded/in a full band situation as far as I'm concerned...

Its all really subjective though this kind of stuff, one mans heavenly tone is anothers nightmare...

Jono wrote:Its all really subjective though this kind of stuff, one mans heavenly tone is anothers nightmare...

very ture!

also it changes so much depending on what amp you are using and guitar, and pickups and strings... and well plectrums? no thats going a bit too far! but you know what i mean maybe?

Yeh, pickups is definately a HUGE factor...

what metal iain said. get boosting!

Jono wrote:Question to all you bass lovers, do you not find that everything gets super-muddy when your playing with a full band? Do you play with 2 guitars on similar settings like that?

It sounds good! All you gotta do is make sure presence is turned up to full as well, thats the way to cut through and have the fattest tone (well, maybe not THE fattest, but yeah..)!

Pez uses different setting to me I'm sure, I can't remember how much different it is to mine!!

Anyway, having Mid on 4ish is fine, just enough mid for metal!!!

Mids are ESSENTIAL for cutting through in a full band situation. For me, mids more or less at full and then adjust bass/treble/presence depending on room sound, cab e.t.c. Scooping mids can sound fine when you're playing on your own but once the whole band starts up, you'll disappear.

I cannot stress this enough. So many bands complain about 'bad sound' or 'the soundman being crap' or 'the guitars not cutting through' e.t.c. when they translate their individual settings to the live environment (I know, I did the same many moons ago...). The guitar is a mid-frequency instrument, it naturally occupies that 'segment' of the frequency spectrum. Too much bass and you're fighting the bass guitar/kick drum, too much top-end and you'll drown in the cymbals. Mids, folks, are where it's at!

Scooped sounding guitars on recordings are never actually scooped at source - the oft-quoted Metallica 'Black' sound is a result of very, very high-quality technology, layers of guitar tracks, post-production/EQing and so forth.

Good post Fiend. Well in my limited guitar technie knowledge, I do like to use plenty of Mid (at least 6 or 7).

But I have to say, it never occured to me to cut the Gain - I always just thought that controlled the extremity of the distortion, so I've always had it on full whack!

On the subject of too much treble.That would depend on the string guage and amp.I feel that a Marshall JCM800 isn't the trebliest of amps especially combined with fat strings.So I think you could get away with the mids on halfway and the treb/presence on full.

This of course will probably change when I get my ADA MP1 rack pre-amp cos that's a shred monster(listen to late 80's Over Kill for further reference)!