Guitar sound  guide

Guitar sound is an endless debate. Here below I have some good starting points from where you can continue your six stringed mixing efforts. I’m quickly going to run through the basic steps for mixing electric and acoustic guitar, pointing out good starting points in both eq and compression. 

This guitar article will be divided into four parts. Compression and EQ for both electric guitar and acoustic guitar. These tips will hopefully get your guitar sound whipped into shape.

Electric guitar

Compression

It depends on the instrument and how it is played if you need compression for electric guitar. Saturated rock guitars do not really need compression because they are already compressed when distorted.

But funky electrics and clean chords may need a bit of compression to even them out a bit and pull them up in the mix. Try getting a gain reduction of around 10dB, maybe up to 15dB or back off down to 5dB depending on the song. 

Play around with the attack and release. If there are big transients you can put a fast attack to catch them. If you only want it to work on the peaks have the release on a fast setting as well.

Eq

You can usually filter the electric guitar quite severely if you have a nice bass track in the song. The electric guitar is a mid-frequency instrument and therefore has a lot of it’s energy in the middle of the frequency spectrum.

For extra oomph and body-thickness try augmenting a few dB’s around 240 Hz and for if your guitar lacks bite I would scan through the areas around 2 – 3 KHz. The main sound of the guitar is around 500Hz. Usually this interferes with the snare though so decide which element needs the area around 500Hz more.

acoustic guitar

Compression

For chord strums I usually fiddle with the threshold at around -10 - -20 dB with a fast to medium attack. I play with the ratio depending on the feel of the song, but it’s usually around 4:1 – 8:1. Just be sure that you're checking the Gain Reduction meter so you see how much you are compressing. Depending on the strength of the signal, you might not be compressing at all, or you might be squashing it.

For me, I never compress the same way, and I don’t really have a method. Especially when it comes to acoustic guitar, it’s a case by case basis, so you’ll have to fiddle the knobs until it feels right.

Eq

Looking over a few of my mixed songs I seem to favor the 500 Hz when it comes to equalizing the acoustic. Just a little boost seems to give mine a little more character. Like I said before, 500Hz is a very good starting point for your guitar sound.

For a lack in thickness you can sweep around 240 Hz but for more bass you can go all the way down to around 100 Hz. I like giving my acoustics a little air and shelve them a couple of dB’s up from 8 Khz. Maybe even at 12 Khz?

Just make sure you’re not boosting around 3 Hz if it gets in the way of the vocal. The acoustic has enough frequencies as not to have it fight the territory of the vocal. That said, you can get a little bit of the sounds of the strings and strumming at around 5 Khz.

Conclusion

I hope you can use some of these tips for future projects. And as always, every instrument and player is different. These setting may not work, but they are a good starting point.

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