Guitar Tone For The Bedroom Producer

Dialling In Guitar Tone

I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it? ~ Jeff Beck.

 When it comes to guitar playing we can talk about technique, showmanship, guitar manufacturer and gear but all that falls by the wayside if that one all important element is missing... 'Tone'. What would any guitar hero's reputation be if it wasn't for them having the expert ability to 'dial in' that killer tone for the sickest rhythm sound or rip roaring solo. The more elements you have (Amp, Compression, Eq, Modulation, Distortion, Delay, Reverb) the more time it will take to find and the more confusing things can become. It's easy to get lost in the maze of choices available so why not keep it simple and build on that from there.

 In the Pro Studio having a 100W Marshall/Fender/Rectifier cranked up to find that sweet spot required, where the amp just starts to break, is no problem having nice isolation rooms so you don't go deaf listening to it, but for the bedroom producer, that's just not an option. There's neighbours, other family members and even Fido and Garfield the cat to not scare the 'by-geezas' out off when you suddenly press record and strike that first power chord. Nowadays manufacturers are aware of this and have went out to capture that specific market with offerings of 1-5W versions of their amplifiers. This allows for a lower volume setting to hit that all important sweet spot on a tube/valve amp without measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale.

 Now this is great news for the home recordist with neighbours and no soundproofing but those amps are still quite expensive and give a one amp sound. For most the mainstay of their guitar playing and recording will be through Guitar amp simulators such as Amplitube, Bias, S-Gear etc that can give loads of various amps/cabs/mics/pedals for far less but for many purists they completely miss the target of sounding authentic.
 Now you could definitely argue that point out all day long but truth be told, like plugins are to hardware, the gap between a real tube amp mic'd up and a simulation is closing all the time. Watch online the cream of the crop simulator, the Kemper, and be amazed as to how many purists have failed to tell the difference. Again a Kemper is extremely expensive but considering how much you would have spent on all the gear it simulates and well you wouldn't have much change from having spent tens of thousand of dollars/pounds.

Software Guitar Simulations

 So if your recording at home in a bedroom/kitchen/basement it's safe to say you don't have huge budgets to splash out on gear and so the only option left open to you is software simulations and that is where I want to aim this at.

 Dialling in a tone to any of these simulations is not as simple as just loading up one of their extensive presets, unfortunately it's not that easy. Rather like the real world counterparts you need to dial in your tone and be aware of how the real equipment responds so you can simulate it. Now presets give the wrong idea that all of that has been taken care of for you, but don't be fooled. There are some basic things you can do before hand to get as close as possible to mimicking the real amps & cabinets.

1. First up - Audio interface. Most two channel interfaces have a dedicated ¼" instrument jack. Now some claim to be Hi-Z this is supposed to mimic a guitar amp socket but don't be afraid to try out the mic/line input instead. The instrument input is clean, untouched, but the pre-amp mic/line input can add some colour and warmth to the signal that really helps in taming those upper harsh digital frequencies that give away the fact you've played through a guitar simulator. After all, in real world conditions, the mic on a guitar cab is always through a mic pre such as a Neve/Api/Console that all colour the sound.
2. Secondly - If your just choosing the in-software cabinet simulation that comes with your Guitar Sim of choice then your losing out massively on realistic tone. Most believe that ⅔ of a guitar tone comes from the speaker cabinet. So with that in mind wouldn't it be prudent to get as close to that as possible? Fear not that is indeed achievable for the bedroom producer in the form of Cabinet Impulse responses, most notable, those from Rosen Digital, Redwirez and Ownhammer. Go to any of their Websites and you will find they all offer a free sample, so what are you waiting for? Mimic a Mesa boogie 4x12 cabinet for FREE. Now that's what I call low cost. If on the other hand you can afford to splash out a little cash? My recommendation is the Justin York Collection from Ownhammer   simply sublime.
3. Thirdly - Copying the real Eq frequency response of a real cabinet. Now why do you need to do this, isn't that what a Cabinet IR is? Well yes and no but knowing that speaker cabinets produce next to nothing below 75hz and the same in the upper frequencies with anything over 5k and you can see there's a range where that sound needs to stay and resonate in. That can vary greatly if you then add further processing to your guitar track with Eq, Compression and tape emulation. Also note  Marshall, Fender and other speaker cabs have a mid frequency dip too around 400hz for the Fender and slightly higher for the Marshall. see Fig below.

So for instance SOUNDING LIKE A GUITAR TUBE AMP there is a very quick, simple step that can be taken to duplicate the sound of a guitar tube power amp with the Presence and Depth set to 0, similar what is offered in other OwnHammer speaker cabinet impulse response libraries. To replicate this sound, following the cabinet IR loader add an EQ with a parametric bell curve set to -3 dB at 400 Hz. Adjust the Q/bandwidth to roughly where the edges of the curve start to make the initial cut around 100 Hz on the low side and 2 kHz on the high side. If necessary, adjust the Q/bandwidth to taste from here to best suit your sound source and tonal preference. Similar to this:-

 Here you can see I've dipped out around 400hz adjusting the 'q' so the shoulders of the dip hit around 100hz up to 2k to mimic a Fender Cab. I've also added a low pass filter at 5k with a slight 6db slope, nothing too aggressive, to mimic the fact that most speaker cabs don't produce anything above that range.

Conclusion

 Now of course tone and everything surrounding it is extremely subjective. Look on any forum that touches on it and you'll see quite heated debates. We all have an idea of what a killer guitar tone actually is and they are all different. Some love Les Paul's through a Marshall, others a Fender Strat through a Fender 2x12, so who's to say what is 100% right or wrong. But that's not the aim of this example. It's about getting as close as possible in sound to the real thing when using a real tube amp in the urban setup is just not practical. If you can afford a Kemper then great your already there but for most modest setups software is the only option and that's what we're trying to improve on here.

Watch the video below as I show and discuss some of these ideas.