Subtractive EQ

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Mustang Martigan
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Subtractive EQ

Post by Mustang Martigan » Mon Oct 23, 2017 7:04 am

Hey, I'm still in the learning process when it comes to carving EQ holes or just sweeping the frequency spectrum to find unwanted frequencies.

To be more specific, I have a hard time with heavy guitars. It seems like I've been over processing them. What are you exactly listening for, interms of unwanted frequencies? I can never tell if it sounds weird or if it just sounds that way (or is supposed to sound that way) cuz of the narrow bell and boost.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:19 am

It totally depends on what you're looking for and what else is happening in the mix. With guitars (and everything really) I start with mic choice. Your mic will have a huge effect on the tone. When I double parts or if there are two different guitarists I try to mic each one differently. Also on doubles it helps to change up the guitar/pick-up type and amp.
When it comes to EQing in the mix I generally don't do too much. I will often high and low pass. Hi pass to get rid of mud. Low pass to get rid of amp hiss, buzz and noise. On lots of guitar tracks the business is happening between 100hz and 6k.
The other trick (taught to me many years ago) is to sweep the mids using a big boost and a narrow q. Sweep till you find the grossest, honkiest, most dominant feequency for that guitar. Then widen the Q and dial back the boost to 2-3db and pull the fader back on the guitar till it sits in the mix. Your effectively turning up the dominant tone of the guitar and turning down all the rest.

Go easy on the compression and eq. If you're having to go to great lengths to get the guitars to work there is likely a problem with the source sound or arrangement. Fix that first and then see if you need to eq in post.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by kslight » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:58 am

TBH, heavy guitar is a tricky one.

IMHO, it tends to sound better the less you do to it.

I would resist the temptation to EQ and compress because you can, and only because you need to. It's very easy to think you are taking out a "honk" or whatever and then the guitar just drops out of the mix entirely. It's very important to not work on the guitar while solo'd, only while in context of the full mix. You really need context with how it mushes together with the bass and drums. How everyone is tuned will also play a key role.

Low tuned distorted guitars tend to kind of slur into bass and together forms a big guitar sludge, not always distinct instruments, but you'll notice if one is missing.

But the classic answer of "it depends" definitely applies.


For heavy guitar I basically always reach for a HPF taking somewhere between 80 and 150hz. I may also carefully apply a LPF (until you can hear it, then back off a bit, unless they are going for the ever popular wet sock tone). You might be surprised how much you can get away with here. I usually will also take out some low mids depending on how the kick and bass fit. And maybe carefully some mids around the snare and vocals. If the drums are having a hard time cutting through it I may sidechain compress the guitars against them as well.



Less is more though.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by vvv » Mon Oct 23, 2017 10:08 am

I almost always (98% of the time) high-pass and low-pass.

Assuming you have stereo rhythm guitars (when you say, "heavy"), I often listen to just the guitars as a submix until I like 'em.

I bring that back into the mix and carve around it, mebbe having to drop some mids offa the toms (300-400-ish), and sometimes having to boost some top on the bass (900, or 1.1kHz, etc.); I start with relatively narrow 1.3 Q. Less often do I have to add top to the snare, or adjust the lead with anything other than the same pass-filters and level, but I do a fair amount of EQ on the vocals, last. All else (keys, percussion, BV's, candy) is itself EQ'd to fit the basic mix. I really almost never carve into the guitars, but then, I'm a guitar player, and like my sound!

Next, I ride the rhythm guitars' level (often as a submix), down 2-3dB mebbe under the verse, etc.

And yeah, mic choice is a great place to start. A 57 is a 57 - it's a predictable kinda thing, and you go from there. I also like various old AKG's on heavy guitars, EV N/D's, the E609, even the Superlux 609-type. About 10-20% of the time I'll also use a ribbon about 4' off the speaker - height can change the sound, also, remember (ceiling vs. floor, for example), as well as what location (against a wall, in a closet, mid-room, etc.), and aim (point at the wall vs. the amp, etc.). Rarely do I use a condensor, altho' I sometimes like a SDC for the distance mic, I more often use a MDC, LDC or tube, and sometimes as the only mic.

Mic distance (for me close = < 3", mid = 4-12", 12"+ = distance), and aim (usually brighter if straight at the center of cone, angle and towards the edge is often darker) also factor.

I sometimes think of all of that stuff as EQ.

Which reminds me to remind you of the old saw about "less distortion might = heavier", or at least more clarity; same goes for FX, especially time-based stuff like reverb, etc.

Another concept, besides varying guitars/mic's/amps (or try not varying them - I been doing that a lot lately! Altho' I do tend to vary the pick-ups and the on-board EQ as well as pick attack and chord inversions) to get heavy, is mix depth; IOW, a stereo pair with reverb, a pair with less reverb, a pair with no reverb, can sound heavier than all in the same mix-space. It doesn't hafta be reverb, either - delay, chorus, etc., can work, including in combination.

I'll note that, more esoterically, (read: head further up arse) the recording pre-amp can make a pretty big difference. On guitars I like to go between a ISA 1 and a UA710 or 110, or sometimes a Altec 1589b or a PM1000 - I do believe they make a difference altho' subtle, but the 710 with the tube gained up is much different than the 110 with the gain down. Plus, I like to pad after the pre externally, and work the tranny if available. I do tend to use the same pre set-up for all electric guitars on any given song.

Also, if ya have a few bucks laying around, try sompin' like a Cloudlifter on yer dynamic mic. I use the Cathedral Pipes Durham - in some ways it's sorta kinda like using an exciter, except it's so much cleaner and better and certainly less "phasey", but it is also brighter and usually with it seems to have more depth. Again, if I use that, I use it on all the guitars, but it might help to use it on only some in the submix.

Finally, I almost never compress electric guitar (unless it's like a Scofield thing or jazz-box sound) but almost always peak limit 3dB or so. But if it's high-gain, there's no need other than mebbe some gain-rides on solos ... That mix approach, of course, is different than playing into the compressor on my pedal board(s).
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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by Mustang Martigan » Mon Oct 23, 2017 4:29 pm

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:19 am
The other trick (taught to me many years ago) is to sweep the mids using a big boost and a narrow q. Sweep till you find the grossest, honkiest, most dominant feequency for that guitar. Then widen the Q and dial back the boost to 2-3db and pull the fader back on the guitar till it sits in the mix. Your effectively turning up the dominant tone of the guitar and turning down all the rest.
Wait, am I misunderstanding you, or are you actually saying to boost the lamest sounding part in the sweep? I get turning up the dominant tone, but is that also the gross sounding one?

Thanks for the mic'ing tips, but I currently have no amp and I'm forced to play thru a POD XT; I'm not sure if this changes the approach.

I was reading some article by one of the guys who mixed a lot of 90's heavy rock coming outta Seattle. He said that he NEVER uses a HPF on guitar, and I'm a big fan of that guy's work. Anyone ever read the article, or ever heard anyone else say this?
Last edited by Mustang Martigan on Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by floid » Mon Oct 23, 2017 4:39 pm

Another guy who thinks the best guitar eq happens before and at the mic. I'm often chasing a balance between the sweet spots on the various tone/eq controls in a signal chain and mic angle/ distance. It's all about context, too - if drums and bass are locked in and working together well, reference them repeatedly while dialing in your tone.
Run some program material or full spectrum noise thru your amp, record it, and then use a spectral analyzer plug on the results - this demonstrates why hpf/lpf is pretty much always a good idea on electric guitar.
As far as sweeping to find an eq point, watching a track meter while doing the sweep can be useful ear training - if it isn't reacting there's not much going on, and vice versa. You can also sweep one track, find a useful point, and then adjust that freq on a different track so that it doesn't interfere as much.
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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by Mustang Martigan » Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:01 pm

kslight wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:58 am
Low tuned distorted guitars tend to kind of slur into bass and together forms a big guitar sludge, not always distinct instruments, but you'll notice if one is missing.
I play in many different tunings.. Standard, Standard with low E dropped to B, Drop D (and C), Double Drop D (both low n high E's to D) and C, Open G, E, E5.. and I could keep going.
Anyways, what do u mean by, you'll notice if one is missing? Like if the low tuned guitar is hiding the bass and vice versa?
kslight wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:58 am
For heavy guitar I basically always reach for a HPF taking somewhere between 80 and 150hz. I may also carefully apply a LPF (until you can hear it, then back off a bit, unless they are going for the ever popular wet sock tone). You might be surprised how much you can get away with here. I usually will also take out some low mids depending on how the kick and bass fit. And maybe carefully some mids around the snare and vocals. If the drums are having a hard time cutting through it I may sidechain compress the guitars against them as well.
What's the "wet sock tone"? You compress the guitar based on the drums playing? Since they're usually always playing when the guitar is, are you referring to specific drums or the entire kit?

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by losthighway » Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:32 pm

I would say I almost never compress a rhythm guitar, unless it's some kind of super clean, clangy fender tone that I want to round out dynamically, or unless I'm trying to do something weird to it.

As for subtractive eq in general, I've kind of bought into the contemporary (and classic?) dogma that you can probably hi-pass everything but maybe the kick and the bass guitar (and even then sometimes a steady roll off up to 40-50 hz seems to help) and it makes the whole mix more efficient and punchy.

This becomes even handier in multi-mic setups. Like with top and bottom snare mics, sometimes high passing up to something surprisingly high up (200- 300hz) can make the bottom snare mic do the high snap I want and cuts out some weird unwanted kick and toms bleed.

I'm not quite as cavalier using a low-pass filter with core mix elements, especially with things that might want "sparkle"- lead vox and overheads. I'll put it on bass guitar pretty readily. I think I might have a little more to learn in application there though, you probably can conserve what's going on above 10k for very specific elements.

When it comes to using the two (hpf and lpf) in combo, I find that you can take some of the "overdub" extras in a mix and make them super narrow to help everything fit. This is where fuzz guitar harmonies, glockenspiel, saxophone, harmonica, hand percussion, extra synths can be wedged into really narrow spaces to keep them out of the way of drum kit, main chord instruments and vocals when they're "add ons". I treat a lot of things in a busy mix like the tone knob on a fuzz pedal pushing things from a woody drone, to a middy ring, up to a spitty attack by removing "everything but". A lot of times shifting these parameters is the only way I can make the last minute 3rd guitar part actually add something and not just jumble stuff.

As for working notch/bell type cuts I mostly use them to tame harshness in the 1k-5k range on vocals/cymabls/reeds, or to make certain drums feel punchier by hollowing out the mids a little above the fundamental, maybe minus 2 or 3 db about a half-octave wide centered somewhere around 200 hz on a kick, or like 300 on a tom. These are total guess frequencies, as the "it depends" and I don't have automatic numbers in mind when I start mixing a kit.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by losthighway » Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:53 pm

Also, I find what I perceive to be a decrease in the popularity of the scooped mids, Dimebag Darrell (RIP) guitar tones in the last decade and a half, to be a wonderful thing for recording overdriven guitars. That said, sometimes pulling out a little bit of mids in a wide-range overdriven guitar tone can leave space for snare or vocals. A Fender combo with a lot of overdrive can use a little taming without sounding hollow and synthetic.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by kslight » Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:18 pm

Mustang Martigan wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:01 pm
kslight wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:58 am
Low tuned distorted guitars tend to kind of slur into bass and together forms a big guitar sludge, not always distinct instruments, but you'll notice if one is missing.
I play in many different tunings.. Standard, Standard with low E dropped to B, Drop D (and C), Double Drop D (both low n high E's to D) and C, Open G, E, E5.. and I could keep going.
Anyways, what do u mean by, you'll notice if one is missing? Like if the low tuned guitar is hiding the bass and vice versa?
kslight wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:58 am
For heavy guitar I basically always reach for a HPF taking somewhere between 80 and 150hz. I may also carefully apply a LPF (until you can hear it, then back off a bit, unless they are going for the ever popular wet sock tone). You might be surprised how much you can get away with here. I usually will also take out some low mids depending on how the kick and bass fit. And maybe carefully some mids around the snare and vocals. If the drums are having a hard time cutting through it I may sidechain compress the guitars against them as well.
What's the "wet sock tone"? You compress the guitar based on the drums playing? Since they're usually always playing when the guitar is, are you referring to specific drums or the entire kit?

As do I. What I'm saying is that sometimes, in context of the mix, tunings, tone...the bass and guitars can blur together. Like an average listener may be listening to a song and hear it as one big guitar...the bass more perceived than distinct. But when that bass is gone they realize how small the guitar really is (or can be). Really depends on the song, of course.

Wet sock tone is what you often call some "doom" guitar tones...like that whole tone knob all the way down, indistinct, neck pickup thing. It was meant as a joke.

Specific drums, the ones that I may want to poke through the big guitar mentioned above. It depends. Not talking big moves here.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by Mustang Martigan » Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:29 pm

vvv wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 10:08 am

Another concept, besides varying guitars/mic's/amps (or try not varying them - I been doing that a lot lately! Altho' I do tend to vary the pick-ups and the on-board EQ as well as pick attack and chord inversions) to get heavy, is mix depth; IOW, a stereo pair with reverb, a pair with less reverb, a pair with no reverb, can sound heavier than all in the same mix-space. It doesn't hafta be reverb, either - delay, chorus, etc., can work, including in combination.
That reverb trick sounds cool. Definitely gonna try it out. I usually track a main rhythm part then add a second track of of basically the same thing but played in a different octave, or the same note/chord played different ways, i.e. G and G5, or at different spots on the fretboard, like A at 022 and 577. Would you send both tracks to the same Aux bus and use the same reverbs on both tracks?

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Oct 23, 2017 7:42 pm

Mustang Martigan wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 4:29 pm
A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:19 am
The other trick (taught to me many years ago) is to sweep the mids using a big boost and a narrow q. Sweep till you find the grossest, honkiest, most dominant feequency for that guitar. Then widen the Q and dial back the boost to 2-3db and pull the fader back on the guitar till it sits in the mix. Your effectively turning up the dominant tone of the guitar and turning down all the rest.
Wait, am I misunderstanding you, or are you actually saying to boost the lamest sounding part in the sweep? I get turning up the dominant tone, but is that also the gross sounding one?
Maybe I chose my words poorly but really, somewhere in the mids will be a frequency that sounds really awful when you crank it. Your not going to crank it once you've found it. On its own it and with drastic eq it'll sound really gross but when you dial the eq back and then pull the fader down on the guitar a bit it'll sit in the mix.
It sounds stupid until you try it and then you'll have a real light bulb going off moment. At least I did the first time I tried it.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by Mustang Martigan » Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:25 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Mon Oct 23, 2017 7:42 pm

Maybe I chose my words poorly but really, somewhere in the mids will be a frequency that sounds really awful when you crank it. Your not going to crank it once you've found it. On its own it and with drastic eq it'll sound really gross but when you dial the eq back and then pull the fader down on the guitar a bit it'll sit in the mix.
It sounds stupid until you try it and then you'll have a real light bulb going off moment. At least I did the first time I tried it.
Nope, that's exactly what I thought you were saying the first time; I'll check it out. I've been noticing that somewhere between 2-4k the tone warbles, or is abrasive or super over processed.. I don't know what the term would be. Like I was saying earlier, not sure if this should be cut out or if that what it's supposed to sound like when highly boosted with a narrow bell. Or maybe this is the tone you are referring to.

Thanks to everyone whose chimed in so far. All these tips have been awesome!

Haha. I just noticed that the forum labeled me an "ass engineer." I'll take it tho; I thought I was just a musician.

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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Oct 24, 2017 11:37 am

I will sometimes take a parametric EQ (EQ3 in my case), take the high and high-mid bands, boost to the max with the narrowest bandwidth possible and scroll through the frequencies until I hear some really offensive/harsh bullshit that makes me recoil in horror, or the really white-noisy bits in the high end, then cut those with the same narrow bandwidth a few db or more to remove or lessen any unnecessary frequency stuff up top. That usually focuses the guitars more and allows me to turn them up louder, plus you get a nice smoothing effect on high gain sounds and it leaves more room in the mix for cymbals and whatnot. I do the exact same thing with my OH's, room mics and close drum mics to mitigate unwanted cymbal bleed or weird ringing frequencies (with snare and toms, this is effective in the low/low-mid area too). That is typically favorable to using LPF's, but I sometimes use a combination of both (especially on the toms) with a very gentle slope LPF.

In lieu of HPF I like to dip with a shelving eq in the low end most times. I've never been stoked about using HPF's on guitars once the frequency gets above 30 or 40hz. Can't really say why, just doesn't sound great to me. For things like bottom sn and OH's, I pretty liberally high-pass though.
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Re: Subtractive EQ

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:08 pm

usually try to do any guitar eq with the pickups/pedals/amp/mic. if i'm eqing afterwards, it's usually a lil midrange cut or a high mid boost.

ALWAYS in context, never in solo. you can have almost any goofy eq curve on a guitar in solo and it'll still sound like a guitar. then in the mix you might not be able to hear it at all. or it might be the ONLY thing you can hear, no matter how low you push the fader.

i sometimes do the opposite of what dave mackinnon does, i'll find the most annoying frequency (usually between 1-4k), cut that, and turn the track up.

that would be a pretty narrow cut. otherwise any eq i do is more broad. don't really like narrow eq much.

i don't do the hi/low pass thing much, but occasionally.

less distortion is almost always better than more. it's a cliche because it's true.

never really had any luck compressing guitars, except clean rhythms or solos.

that pod probably isn't making your life any easier. have you looked into some plugin amp sims? i like the scuffham s-gear...

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