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Guitarists: Midrange is Your Friend
03/09/2009

Midrange is where guitar tone truly lives. Now, this might not apply in certain cases; if your style tends toward super-low tunings and massive metal wallop, chances are your EQ curve looks like a smiley face (ironically enough) and suits you perfectly. If you seek big, bad classic rock or hard rock tones, however, midrange frequencies are definitely your friends. If you think about where a rock band's respective frequencies would be "shelved" for maximum effect, consider that the drum kit takes up a lot of sonic real estate both in the low and high ranges. The bass occupies mostly lows and low mids. The vocals live mostly in the high-midrange area, and that leaves a nice, cozy niche right in the middle (overlapping the bass and vocals to some extent) for the guitar. By sucking out the midrange, you're basically robbing your amp of the strongest part of its voice. That's why metal-oriented rigs that de-emphasize midrange are typically higher-wattage units; they have to compensate with sheer power. You'd be shocked at how loud a little 20-watt tube amp sounds in a band when it's allowed to sing with its own "voice."





Other Techtips from March 2009:
March 31 - G5 RAM Installation
March 27 - Amp Aiming
March 26 - PT Playback Cursor
March 25 - Mic Measurements
March 24 - Plug-in Dilemma
March 23 - Coil Splitting Versus Coil Tapping
March 20 - Nut Slot Depth
March 19 - Long Guitar Cables
March 18 - Openly Buzzing Strings
March 17 - Combining MIDI Signals
March 16 - Guitar Control Knob Removal
March 13 - Measuring Neck Relief
March 12 - RAM Performance in Nehalem Macs
March 11 - Kickin' Ribbons
March 10 - FireWire and Macs
March 09 - Guitarists: Midrange is Your Friend
March 06 - Data Storage
March 05 - BR600 Transfer to Computer
March 04 - Levels When Tracking Audio
March 03 - MP3 and PT
March 02 - Buffers and Latency


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