A simple little test for how cabinets affect sound would be the legendary Pignose amps. Opening and closing them is the built in EQ, and changes the sound dramatically. Great little amps.
Hey Glenn! Thanks for the shout and the kind words! Look forward to our next hangout and discussion. As far as what was said in my video, the vast majority of the audience understood what i was saying, but there were a good number of people who missed the message. i was simply trying to convey that there is a cheaper and easier way to get to the same goal - getting better speakers if you dont already have them. People heard the word "investment" and immediately discarded the rest of the point being made. Whether they want to admit it or not, anything you spend your money on in the guitar world is an investment. Spending money on an item that brings you value, whether it be a stock, or a tool for your craft, is literally the definition of investment. As i told others in the comment section of my video and in the video itself - im trying to save you money on your way to getting the tone you desire. As I know youre all too aware of, though - people hear what they want to hear.
Somebody asked Dorothy Parker to use ‘horticulture’ in a sentence. Her response: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” You can’t make guitarists think either, it would seem.
I think all the time. I think the gorgeous flame top on my PRS and the quilt top on my Schecter are stunningly beautiful. I also think the simple poplar grain on my cheap Tele copy is beautiful. I THINK they feel amazing the way they come to life when they begin to vibrate! I THINK the PRS is articulate and precise and it makes me want to learn and advance as a musician. I THINK that the Schecter looks so metal that it makes me feel like im 16 again, only with a guitar i could have only dreamed of having back then. I THINK my old relic Tele copy has a vibe that wants to play more blues and rock flavored stuff, which i do play when im holding that guitar, but not my others. All of these thoughts happen well before i plug each guitar into anything! So why am i stupid for having these thoughts and where am i wrong? Id love to know.
I did not know that was a famous quote. I heard that in an ERB (Cleopatra vs someone). They modified it to "you can lead a wh*re to culture but you can't make her think".
@@bassicly4250 Accept that most TrUmP voters are work a day folks who can't afford expensive gear. What world are you living in and what evidence are you talking about?
Could you do blind tests between cheap and expensive different studio/production gear, plugins and things like that? I avoided buying expensive new pickups thanks to you😊, but I find myself craving expensive studio-gear that I probably don't need at all.
It's seems like even the cheap gear we have now is probably as good or better than most of what they worked with in the early to mid 60's, and they managed. I just wish I were a better player or songwriter.
Check out Jordan Valeriot's channel Hardcore Music Studio. He has videos comparing high end studio hardware to the plugin versions, different versions of 1176 hardware compressors, and tracking to tape vs digital.
Hi Glenn, I would love to see an episode about the loudness wars. maybe comparing some albums that had a remaster that didn't sound better. Some talk about dynamic range and over compression in the mix and master stages. Love the show, you helped me to realise that I need to practice and not drool over tone wood and pickups. Cheers.
welllll ACthUalLy............ I once was in a Steve Vai concert, he had a very weird suit full of LEDs and laser. It was probably consuming a hefty ammount of energy, because it generated a shit ton of interference on the guitar's electric signal. So, yeah, clothes did affected the tone :D
That's what I keep saying. Anyone who knows what the fuck they are talking about isn't buying a solid body electric guitar for its sound. It's about comfort, tuning stability, and craftsmanship. No one is going to notice a difference in sound, but they'll notice when you're out of tune. They'll notice the dead notes because of a shitty fret job. It's kind of annoying that this debate is still happening.
That one and number of the Beast are my two favorites. But he is right when they remaster stuff it sounds totally different I mentioned in one of my comments that led Zeppelin had a lot of their stuff remastered and it did not sound as good as the original vinyl.
I have a little home studio with a bunch of gear and a weird thing happened to me the other day. I went into my local Long and McQuades in Markham Ontario and I realized that they didn't have anything that needed. I'm done. I now own everything that i need to write the big hit song. Oh crap! Now i have to do it. Love your show and I've been a subscriber since you were in your early numbers. Keep it going , my friend!
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, class . "That is why you fail" nice one glen , great retort. Thanks for the advice I've just swapped out one of my two v30s in my 2x12 for another speaker and it sounds epic the blend of the v30 and my new speaker is class .
Glenn, I have to admit that as a guitarist that you provide great usable information. I do have this to say though, I have replaced pickups for other people and myself and found differences in sound before and after... funny enough, when I recorded those sounds albeit over a crappy phone mic for before and after comparison the difference is almost imperceptible... but still there. You do great work, love the channel.
Love your answer to NeglectedField. Gives praise where it's due, admits what your test doesn't hear, addresses thw differences in method et al. Proper, polite, direct. Nice.
I’ve been mixing older material, some of which has DI guitar tracks from 2 different guitarists, playing at least 3 different guitars each. At the time, i HEARD THE DIFFERENCES WHEN TRACKING!! All my guitars sounded different! All the other guitarist’s guitars sounded different!! And, his pickups were all passive, while i played all actives! Of course, once i feed them through the same amp sims, it is VERY hard to hear tonal differences. I can hear playing differences, but the “tone”? Not so much. In order to get the tonal separation i wanted? I changed speaker IR’s!! Thanks for all your recording tips, your knowledge has evolved my mixes tremendously! Keep those mix tutorials coming, and live mix reviews real, loud, and full of great advice!!
I am actually not sure it does. When you go to a recording studio to record for a label, they don't put you in scrubby studios. I am curious what the rich kid comment is about, besides bitterness.
KORN-Untouchables-2006: Johnathan talks ab this album and how when they worked on Issues is when the whole band got really serious ab the sound and production of their music. So when Untouchables started they used the most advanced shit around to make it. I mean that album is so fucking highly Diamond polished it’s crazy. I would love to know what they had and how they used it. Now again I know it’s 2006, but Korn is fucking loaded so they had all the amazing shit out the day that’s probably some really good shit. The studio was Insane and everything in it was insane. I would love to know how that studio time was used.
I bought two identical basswood bodies. One i put a thin coat of polly on. On other i did a coat of sanding sealer, a coat of primer, two coats of green paint, and a top coat of clear to make it all nice and shiny! They both came out wicked cool but they feel nothing alike. Thy thin polly guitar resonates in your hands like crazy! Completely comes to life. The other feels like its struggling to vibrate under all of those paint layers. And it doesn't matter how much difference it makes in the mix because 90% of guitars will NEVER be in a mix. And even the ones that are, you still dont want it to feel lifeless and uninspiring do you? The fact is that different colors require very different spraying procedures. A white pearl metallic will have many more layers of meterial than a plain black one for instance. And a nitro cellulose finnish begins thinning the day it cures and it never stops thinning until its gone. The idea that these things don't make some difference is preposterous!
@@narsustv1331 The example may be anecdotal but the principle is not. Every layer of meterial you add will effect the resonant qualities. The makeup of each layer also has an effect. It is scientifically impossible to add something to anything without the original control example changing. This isn't that hard. A bare piece of pine will not vibrate the same way as one with lyers and layers of meterial over it. What if you dipped the body in wet cement? Still no difference in your mind? The problem with this line of thinking is that the sound through the amp is the only thing that matters. But many of us who disagree get as much if not more enjoyment from the resonant feel of the instrument as we do from the amplified sound. And what about all the hours many players spend playing unplugged while watching tv or listening to a podcast. Is there no part of the scientists experiment that takes that into account?
Absolutely I would love to see comparisons on remasters. I have definitely gone out of my way to find origiinal CD releases because there was definitely a tonal difference on same equipment.
I might be crazy but I was listening to the first Maiden record a lot through streaming and then when I put the old LP on one day I swear that the guitar tracks were thinner and had a lot less overdrive on the original recording. Seems like more than a remaster happened. But again I haven't done a clean A/B test, it just seemed that way to me in passing.
As far as snare sounds go, my absolute favorite (and for tom sounds) is the one on Refused’s album The Shape Of Punk To Come; it just sounds good and does so on every sound system I listen on. I’ve spent my entire time making music trying to figure out how to replicate that snare and toms and I finally figured out a year or two ago that tape saturation was the key along with paralleled channel with a lot of compression and distortion
Why aren't you guys talking about how much the mayo vibrates, or doesn't vibrate, in your hands. Because a huge part of the tonewood argument is that some woods resonate differently than others do. Can't you guys feel a difference between a mahogany guitar and a plywood one?! I sure can. Do you guys not have nerve endings in your hands?
Yes to an Is Modern Mastering Killing Our Music episode 🤘 But faaaaakkkk yea to a series of Mixing reviews of epic Metal albums man?? Yah smooth bastid 💪😎
The section about the drums being recorded in a foyer is really cool and reminds me of an experiment I'd love to try. Recording in weird places, like the back of an earth mover.
That Yoda quote really kind of nails the point and resonates with me. Unless you’re doing an acoustic song, the drums are the foundation and they need to be as perfect as you can get them, without a glorious drum track you have nothing. Bass has to come in and nail it so the song has any body to it. Only then can you nail the guitars and see how they fit…amp sims and speakers etc. then vocals. You can do it all in different orders but you will most likely fail…your timing will be off from the other instruments, they won’t sit in the mix, no body, something will not feel good and you’ll spend all your time trying to fix broken shit…let’s also not even speak about how hard it is for a drummer to nail a fully loaded track while slamming away on drums with minimal or no reference points.
That is most commonly applied to acoustics. There is nothing "hokey" or "imaginary" about tone woods for acoustics. You tap test tops for best resonances.
@@DJBuglip Wood matters more for acoustics than electrics, but there's a ton of hype and nonsense about tonewoods for acoustics, too. The really important wood for the tone of the guitar is the soundboard (top plate), and it's usually made of an inexpensive, light wood--usually spruce, sometimes cedar. So manufacturers hype the woods used elsewhere in the guitar, which matter much, much less and don't have the characteristic sounds that the marketing says they do. The sound of a piece of wood depends more on its thickness and bracing than on the slight differences between the woods commonly used for, say, the sides or back of a guitar. You can make great guitars with cheap spruce tops and picking the denser back and side woods for their cheapness, or for their rareness and appearance (so you can charge much more money).
@@DJBuglip I’ve seen luthiers do it with solid bodies. Gibson actually claims, or did at one time, to tone tab the best pieces for their custom shop stuff.
Glenn, I think you're right about speaker cabinet dimensions; I inadvertently discovered this when I bought a new TV and took it off the wall and put it in an armoire that happened to fit it just a bit snugly. Whereas I'd had thin, dissipated sound, all of a sudden I had booming, bass-y sound which only improved when I got into the advanced sound controls. I call it the Bose Effect, which relies on a similar technology. Hell, I'm going to put off getting surround sound until Atmos is absolutely required. I really enjoyed today's video and the discussion it stimulated.
We totally wanna see the remastered topic Glen! I feel the mastering war screw things up. I heard a vinil until I was like 30 yo and damn, this shit breathes, not like my cds.
My buddy went to school to make car stereo boxes back in the 90's and he learned the mathematical equations for speaker output to box size and shape , ports and baffles for what results you were after . Build some test cabs Glen!
Hey Glenn! I caught your eye the other day during the livestream when I thanked you for recommending changing speakers to get better guitar tones. You acknowledged it by saying "thanks Ben Arnold," which was super cool to have you mention my name on the show! So thanks for that as well. Anyway, on to my point, the video Kyle made titled something like "Why Changing your Guitar Speakers is Dumb" appeared in my suggested videos feed but I haven't watched it. I'm not subscribed to his channel - nothing against him, just a personal preference. And I can understand looking at guitars and all the associated gear as an investment. I certainly look at my guitars and amps as something that very well may appreciate in the future, so I can certainly grasp that as a concept. Nonetheless, the only way I wouldn't change the speakers in a cab is if I somehow acquired a cab that is - for whatever reason - special, and therefore valuable. I know that when I'm browsing Reverb or a similar sites for cabs, I'm going to be willing to pay more for a 2x12 that has Celestion Alnico Speakers in it, or even other Celestions such as Greenbacks, G12M Creambacks, and G12T Creambacks. That said, I can sort of see his point, if you have a matching Head and Cab, at least one that really "matches," such as a Vox AC30 Head and the Vox Cab that looks basically just like the AC30 Combo amp. I can see being able to sell those together for more than what you could sell the current Vox production AC30C2 combo for. BUT! Vox, being awesome, already puts great speakers in their amps and cabs. And I feel like this is the case with any Head/Cab combo that is ever going to increase in value. Any Morgan Head and matching Cab is definitely going to increase value as well. They look cool and they come with quality speakers installed. The reason it increases in value, particularly if it goes out of production, is because they did it right straight from the factory. So, if that's the case, I think you have to assume the opposite is also true. If a cabinet - with matching head or not - came with cheap/bad or just not great speakers, then no amp is going to sound particularly good with that cab. So I have a feeling that the cabs people are going to want to change the speakers in aren't cabs that you need to worry about preserving in original configuration because they came out of the factory door without good speakers in the first place. I currently use a stereo rig as a Hobbyist player (dying to get a band together) that consists of an AC30C2 on one side which is the version with Greenbacks. May go for the Alnico Blues one day, but its hard to justify when the Greenbacks sound as good as they do. The other side is a Morgan MVP66 Head with my "modular" 4x12 cab, which is where I really put your advice to use - the 4x12 is actually two 2x12 cabs - one is a Harley Benton Vintage Cab (which came with V30s, though I've since swapped them out) and the other is a Seismic Audio open back 2x12 cab I bought with no speakers included. In each cab I have one Celestion Ruby and one Fane M65. I could not be happier with the tones I can get!!! I can go clean and clear enough to play Blue Sky (Allman Brothers) to crunchy AC/DC Highway To Hell tones to pretty much whatever sound I want. I grin like an idiot every time I fire up my amps and pick up one of my guitars! I can also absolutely shake my whole house when I'm home alone, which is just so much fun! I know this has been a book of a post, but I gotta give one shout out in this long post about guitar speakers. I gotta say that when it comes to guitar amps I've owned quite a few, and then about last September I bought my AC30 and thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. And it stayed that way until I got the Morgan MVP66 about 3 weeks ago and set it up as the other side, replacing a Phaez hand-wired amp I was using as the other side of my rig, the Phaez Atticus is also a great amp. The Morgan is the only other amp I've personally played that even might sound better than a Vox. If you can afford it, get yourself a Morgan - as long as you have some decent speakers - or if you're a little tight on funds to snag a Morgan, there's a reason that you've seen the Vox logo on so many stages behind so many famous guitarists. And you can find a great AC30 used for $800 or less!
Yes, please plan a series on mastering. "Headroom", "compressed to death", "wall (war) of sound" etc. You know the drill. That would be greatly appreciated. - Keep it up.
Jim's video on cabinets is one of the most entertaining and informative videos I've ever seen and is a fantastic demonstration of trying things for yourself. Taking things as gospel because you read it on a forum post from 2004 is not the way to do testing!
One of my high school symphonic band directors once told me "sometimes the notes you don't play are louder than the ones you do" Apparently that applies to the words you don't speak as well. Perfect response, Glenn. 😂
Oh no! Glenn is going to get involved in the loudness wars! Judging on your stance on most things you’re gonna make a lot of people mad, but probably me really happy
I used to be very snubish about my gear or really what I wanted to buy rather than what I actually had, but as I’ve learned about gear, like tube screamers aren’t the only tube screamers I’ve come to realise that at some point I was listening to the gear and not the music, and convincing myself it made a difference that it didn’t. If it sounds good it is good, if it does a job you don’t need, you don’t need it, don’t invent a job to justify a bit of gear and above all remember you learned to play to make music not obsess over gear, so have fun and get to rocking
What happened to those Iron Maiden remasters was the 1990s. Everyone was very into pushing the treble on rock CDs in the '90s. Another good example is Nirvana's In Utero. The original master made in 1993 has the treble really pushed. The 20th anniversary remaster doesn't and sounds like a band in a room. It's far better. Those Maiden remasters were done in 1998. (I actually interned in the mastering studio where they were done, in 1998. But those were done earlier in the year. Also, I was just the intern. Not my fault.) They were done again, in 2015. The hi-resolution version of the 2015 remasters on Qobuz sound like the original records. I would be very surprised if the CDs done that same year don't also sound like the vinyl.
For the guy who wrote/composed from a guitar sound idea: This is great for getting the song written and a demo recording. However, when it comes to doing a final production, you will want to start with the drums and bass then build from there. However, Glenn was coming from a mixing perspective. When building a mix, getting the rhythm section sorted first will allow the rest fall into place much easier.
RE: "Why your guitar sounds like shit in a mix video" - that's exactly how I learned (as a self-taught beginner to recording) and WHY my guitars sounded like shit in a mix! So thanks a whole damned bunch, Glenn! I already knew from my own testing that pickups, amp sim, cables, string gauge, plectrum, socks, and weather didn't matter (scientifically tested, just trust me™). This video gave me the basic thing I was missing when other sources were talking about extra software, EQ curves, and fancy studio monitors and equipment. Sometimes, it's the really simple basics that get overlooked and taken for granted. I struggled to get a decent tone for easy E-standard 6 string before because I wasn't nailing the bass and drum levels in first. That video gave me such quick results that I just went all in for something I'd previously struggled to get non-muddy... and easily got a massive and heavy as heck solid tone for my 7 string using drop G in less than 30 minutes. Thanks so much, Glen. That video opened up the world a ton for me.
I'd definitely be interested in seeing A/B comparison's of remastered stuff. See how much of it is "loudness wars" related. It's funny that you had Maiden mentioned, because I was just listening to the remastered version of Running Free on Maiden's channel and compared it someone who posted the original. I thought the remastered version sounded really good. As a drummer I'm probably a bit biased that way, but the separation in the tracks was noticeably better and I could actually hear the bass drum.
Remastering classic albums is usually “more detail, less mojo”. Example: remasters in stereo of early Stones recordings, when they were actually recorded in glorious mono.
I absolutely LOVE this series. It has changed the way I buy gear and how I recommend gear. I'd like to invite Glenn to come on our channel's podcast to discuss all things music but especially this particular topic. It would be nice to have a discussion and back and forth. I think it could be super helpful as well. So what do you say Glenn? I've already sacrificed the recommended number of goats, now I just need to talk with you. Thanks for this wonderful series. It has been super super helpful.
Gleeeeen I wrote the comment last week about being a metal head who is also trying to achieve the Hendrix tone. I realize that you think Hendrix is a relic from the past and this is a metal channel etc. But Might I direct your attention to Kyuss, they make good use of Hendrix tones. I'd also like to add that a great man once said "To be influenced by many makes you great, but to be influenced by everyone makes you original". Or something to that effect. Anyways, love the show.... Cheers 🤘.
You’re remaster point reminded me of a similar thing with Soundgarden’s Superunkown . I had the cd and was listening with my buddy who was a huge Soundgarden fan who also owned it on tape for his car. He complained about the guitars been quiet and I didn’t believe him. He ran home and got his tape and we listened to both on my stereo. The guitars on the tape were much bigger. It was explained to me years later that the album was recorded split at the signal for analog and digital recordings and that probably had something to do with it. I’ve always been curious to learn more. Fuck U Glenn thanks.
There Glenn, I logged in and subbed. You can stop whining now! Your legion grows! Seriously though, buddy you're a entertaining dude. Critical reviews are much appreciated and valuable in a world that just wants to endless sell us more stuff.
Glenn, when I first purchased a EVH 5153 100 watt head it sound like crap through my cheap Marshall cabinet. One week later I purchased the matching EVH 412 cabinet. You are correct, it was the speakers in the cabinet, night and day sound. That was 6 years ago.
Hi from Japan! 🤘🎌 Yes, by all means, please count this message as my vote for an episode about remasters; that sounds fascinating. By the way, I did a small spit-take of Coke Zero when your screen saver turned your monitor into a flyby over an airport. 😮😂
How about designing a compressor with controls that make sense to musicians ? 1 control for how fast the compression kicks in. 1 control for how loud you want the signal to get. 1 control for how quiet you want the signal to get. Then 1 control to set the compressors "Fade Out".
I remember when Vapor Trails came out by Rush and the original was either mastered wrong or mixed wrong, because everything was THIS LOUD, the dynamic range was toasted. It was so bad, they literallly remixed and/or remastered it and it's tolerable now.
Gleeeeeeeen! We've seen a lot about guitar speakers but what about bass speakers? Bass players also love to mix cabs with different sized speakers (a popular combo is a 4 x 10' cab and a 1 x 15' one) Could you make a video on how speakers affect bass tone? Testing different bass speakers in different size on guitar could be interesting as well 🤔
Your reaction to the "432Hz tuning" is hilarious! Thank you, Glenn for your posts! I always enjoy them!...ALSO, the best sounding "Les Paul" style guitar I've ever owned is an Ibanez Art100 ( not Artcore) double cut that I found at a yardsale for $60. Go figure.
Glenn, it's acoustic shortcut! When you have an open cab the bass waves bend around the cab (due to them being long waves), hit the speaker from behind and cancel themselves out acoustically! This is why guitar cabs are allowed to be open, while HiFi speakers are not. This is where the lo-end scoop comes from. Hope I could help, since I didn't see the mentioned video.
Comparing masters is a great idea for a series, especially getting a perspective from an engineers standpoint. Megadeth’s 2004 remasters are infamous for being considered worse than the originals. I was today years old when I found out Killing is my Business has been remastered AGAIN
This channel has been a gold mine of production information for a long time and I’m here for it every episode! Does he ask you to check out sponsored products? Sure. But, who cares? He isn’t begging for money on here. He isn’t saying his way is the best way or only way to do things (even though it likely is the best way lol). He provides very fair / balanced info, and frankly, most of the time unless a guitar is a complete piece of garbage, with the way guitar manufacturing is in 2023-2024 with CMC machines etc… a cheap Chibson can absolutely come close or better than a Gibson. Same for Fender or most brands. The amp definitely plays the biggest part of the signal chain. Pedals and effects as well. The guitar itself, just isn’t that big of a deal.
Had to take a few screenshots of the answer to 432hz question - this will be the reply from now on to people who are ornery, obnoxious, or just plain rude. Thank you for these gems!
Mastering is just volume and compression. With vinyl, the gain had a limit or the stylus would not be able to handle it. You can have much higher gain with digital masters than with vinyl records.
Heh, the comment at 6:49 is hilarious, because my wife's $150 Squier Strat with the bridge and middle pickup together (like a humbucker) sounds almost identical to my Fender Strat HH on its bridge pickup. Mine does sound a bit beefier, but I'm not sure if that's because it has an actual bridge humbucker, or if it's because of the heavier gauge strings I use.... Worth a test for sure! Also! 10:18 is some wise words. JHS always says "if it sounds good, then it is good" or something like that. And that's the most important thing!
"Vote with a Bullet" by CoC Damn, thought I was the only one who loved that song.. (I know, I know I wasn't the ONLY one but I was one of the few in my metal community). That song just crushes.
Woods are getting better and better every year. We get mahogany so well treated that is has great structural properties, not to mention modern baked maples which are absolutely fantastic. It's not much of a "tone thing" than a structural integrity property ... like necks that don't deform and warp anymore, and of course, the more rigid and the stiffer it is the better it, which is why we use wood instead of jelly to build pianos and guitars (and even cast iron for pianos). These treated woods not only have better structural properties, but also tend to be a little lighter (less moisture due to treatments). And when you only play metal stuff (endless gain), the guitars can be made of anything (plastic, concrete, cardboard ua-cam.com/video/7Oo2H-W7d6A/v-deo.html , plywood, etc...) it all winds up sounding the same, so the only thing which matters is that the color of your guitar matches the shade of blue of your hair.
I used Fender J basses for 20+ years. When I was shopping for a lightweight Kiessel bass, I spent months researching tone woods, pick-ups, bolt-on vs. neck-thru etc. I concluded the wood didn't matter and just went with the Kiessel Modern J bass. But when I got my Kiessel, I do hear a slight difference and definitely "feel" the difference between the traditional Fender alder body vs. Kiessel roasted swamp ash. I kind of regret not paying extra for a maple top to bring back some of that bright tone I was used to.
Same thing happened with the Megadeth remasters. I listened to Countdown to extinction until the tape in the cassette broke. I bought the remastered cd and it sounded like Nick Menza had been replaced by a drum machine.
As far as Costinnovac's comment... I also start with guitar and build the track around that... I get my guitar ideas first, then I build a drum track and a bass track to suit... but I still record guitar last and adjust the guitar tone to fit. I suuuuck at guitar and also mixing/mastering (im learning).... but double tracking and adjusting guitar tone to fit the mix are super simple things I learned from this channel that go a LONG way in getting the best result out of my suck, there's really no excuse.
If you happened to read this. I watched it twice. The main one is on tv. The one I'm not watching is on my phone. Makes it easier for me to remember if I watched it later on when I'm looking for more videos. Year & A Half by Metallica should still be on here to watch. Love watching that. I once made a bootleg cut where i didnt have to sit through the videos.
Glenn, can you make a video showing how to properly swap out (A/B-ing) speakers? I have this image of person X swapping out speakers and saying "oh, wow, these sound completely different!" while all along not paying attention to mic placement. Ideally, neither the mic or the cabinet should move even an 1/8" to get an accurate test. The only thing that can move is the actual replacement of the speaker which is very hard to do - keeping the mic & cab in one place while changing a speaker. As soon as either the mic or cab is altered, the test is null since placement has changed. I've even seen someone mistakenly swap out the speaker - they mistakenly put the same speaker back in and did not use proper A/B testing, moved the cab to swap speakers, placed the cab back in "position" and were amazed at how the sound changed! The position of mic, cab and speaker MUST be in the exact unaltered same position to properly A/B a speaker.
GLLLEEEEEEEEEEEENNNN!!!!!!!!! You should get into ham radio. It’s amazing how many guitarists do not understand frequency and amplification. As well as speakers and how circuitry works. Save money and build your own stuff!!
Glenn, here's an IDEA for the next BLIND (sort of) test. Record DI tracks from various guitars and SHOW how every guitar's DI track sounds like (this not a blind test part). And then run every DI track through high-gain AMP and do a BLIND test
For me the takeaway from those guitar shootouts wasn’t that they all sounded the same, it’s not to let preconceived ideas and price influence you. In every blind test I have had one I would pick over the others. The trick is not to care which one it is. Don’t be caught up in snobbery or inverse snobbery. The one that sounds right to you is the right one for you.
I have noticed the trend of remasters sounding crap for a few years now. The Black album remaster was no where near as good as my old one. The reason I was told is because the modern remasters of everything are aimed towards streaming. Or the producer turns up the volume on parts that are supposed to be quiet.
I have 8 guitars in the studio. 6 and 7 string. They all have the stock pickups. Sometimes I need an active pickup sound, sometimes I want a less compressed passive pickup sound. But otherwise? The most important part is amp, effects, and cabinet when I am recording. No, I am not buying expensive pickups to make a slight EQ shift.
Love to see the recommendation of "Kyuss- Blues for the Red Sun." I'm a big fan of the stoner rock/metal genres, do you have any videos on recording tones for that genre of music? I'd love to see some videos on nailing those Desert-esque tones and if you change anything in your approach in recording them compared to normal metal music. On the topic of guitar sound since you recently did that blind test shootout, all the sounds sounded good to me, I wouldn't be disappointed with any of those sounds for tone. However, there was a time before where I used exclusively humbucker guitars and didn't have any single coils and I got in a mood where I wanted to play some SRV/Hendrix, I was playing the right notes on my Les Paul copy, but for some reason it didn't feel right. I had asked a buddy to loan me his strat to test out and I noticed the sound/playability was what I was looking for when I wanted to get that sound out of a guitar. Do you think that if you had added a single coil guitar to that blind test it would get immediately identified from the 4 humbucker style ones?
Im old enough (and smart enough) to know that when i spend $2,000 on a guitar, I'm paying for a quality build that will last for generations. When i use the whammy bar, it wont go so badly out of tune I need to spend the next ten minutes tuning it. But I'm not under any delusions that the extra $1,000 will make it sound twice as good. I want a well built, quality instrument, that will last a long time. I don't believe in tone wood 😆
I think for that 3rd comment (the long one) If you are noodling on your guitar and come up with a good riff and decide to record it do it, Then put in your drum and bass to go with it, then mute or remove the guitar track and quantify the drums and bass to nail down the timing. Now, you have your rhythm section to replay your groovy riff to and keep it in time.
I play with a saxophone player. We play technical death metal (with sax, Wound Collector if you're interested) and sometimes when it's hot, the sax player will also prefer 442Hz instead of the regular one because it matches better. Not a big deal, but I never got it. But maybe that's because I have no concept of wind instruments.
I'm be interested in a discussion on mastering. I like my music a bit on the crispy side. I can't tell you how many records I've bought that were a disappointment in high end frequency response - making the music a bit dull sounding. But if you do some comparisons, I'd suggest adding the vinyl in the fray. Rumor has it that early CD were just ripped from the master tapes intended for vinyl. Those masters were intended to compensate for the frequency response of the cutting lathe, which tended to make CDs sound harsh. (Metal? Harsh? Might be great marriage partners.) So the real question - does the remastered CD sound closer to the original vinyl then the original CD?
I don't have superhuman hearing, and I love blind tests, I've always been pretty accurate at finding the nuance differences between the products being tested. Glenn is correct about the differences being small. I'm pretty perceptive and can hear it in the room or an isolated guitar track pretty easily. But in a mix? Definitely not. I think the points he brings up are smart for people who are actually recording and on a budget. If you're well off, then get whatever makes you warm and fuzzy.
We need to spend some time convincing tonewood snobs that they should be recording in a log cabin in the woods. Brick for better sustain, but won't be as warm.
@@luisguillermoviruesdelgadi182 Might work for an Ibanez, but would create a tinny humbucker feel on a real guitar. I would have to try it to know for sure.
On a gamble, i got a 100$ DS 18 pro-x12. 4ohm. Its frequency is 63.5hz-11.3hz. Just wanted something "left field" basically.Built a little custom heel toed 1x12 sealed cab. .75 air space, put a little poly fill in it,broke it in and its surprisingly awesome for Heavy, speed guitar. Precise, clear , even and accurate is best way to describe it. Its 450w rms, if you like hot tubes😉
When you want to talk about massive differences in sound just listen to the original recording of. "...And Justice For All". then the properly mixed "And Justice For Jason" where you can hear what Jason Newsted's bass tracks should've sounded like
Here here. When i heard the remix it just about blew my socks off. The album is great, sure, but mixed like that it would have been one of the greatest!
Don't forget Ozzy's No More Tears album.I think it's one of the best sounding albums ever.Also check out the Aeons Black album by Swedish (I believe)death metal band Aeon. It has one of the most clear ,bone crushing, heavy rhythm guitar tones ive ever heard
A simple little test for how cabinets affect sound would be the legendary Pignose amps. Opening and closing them is the built in EQ, and changes the sound dramatically. Great little amps.
Hey Glenn! Thanks for the shout and the kind words! Look forward to our next hangout and discussion.
As far as what was said in my video, the vast majority of the audience understood what i was saying, but there were a good number of people who missed the message. i was simply trying to convey that there is a cheaper and easier way to get to the same goal - getting better speakers if you dont already have them.
People heard the word "investment" and immediately discarded the rest of the point being made. Whether they want to admit it or not, anything you spend your money on in the guitar world is an investment. Spending money on an item that brings you value, whether it be a stock, or a tool for your craft, is literally the definition of investment.
As i told others in the comment section of my video and in the video itself - im trying to save you money on your way to getting the tone you desire. As I know youre all too aware of, though - people hear what they want to hear.
As someone who didn't see your video, thanks for adding context.
Hey Kyle can you send Draven your boss katana amp head so he can do a low tuned demo of it?
Somebody asked Dorothy Parker to use ‘horticulture’ in a sentence. Her response: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” You can’t make guitarists think either, it would seem.
An Algonquin Round Table reference !!! Nice 😊
I think all the time. I think the gorgeous flame top on my PRS and the quilt top on my Schecter are stunningly beautiful. I also think the simple poplar grain on my cheap Tele copy is beautiful. I THINK they feel amazing the way they come to life when they begin to vibrate! I THINK the PRS is articulate and precise and it makes me want to learn and advance as a musician. I THINK that the Schecter looks so metal that it makes me feel like im 16 again, only with a guitar i could have only dreamed of having back then. I THINK my old relic Tele copy has a vibe that wants to play more blues and rock flavored stuff, which i do play when im holding that guitar, but not my others. All of these thoughts happen well before i plug each guitar into anything! So why am i stupid for having these thoughts and where am i wrong? Id love to know.
I did not know that was a famous quote. I heard that in an ERB (Cleopatra vs someone). They modified it to "you can lead a wh*re to culture but you can't make her think".
The world is full of idiots , most of em Bought expensive gear and would vote for TrUmP ignoring the evidence.
@@bassicly4250 Accept that most TrUmP voters are work a day folks who can't afford expensive gear. What world are you living in and what evidence are you talking about?
Could you do blind tests between cheap and expensive different studio/production gear, plugins and things like that? I avoided buying expensive new pickups thanks to you😊, but I find myself craving expensive studio-gear that I probably don't need at all.
This needs to be seen by Glenn. 100% agree
Just because the pickups are expensive doesn't mean they are objectively better than the ones in the stock guitar
It's seems like even the cheap gear we have now is probably as good or better than most of what they worked with in the early to mid 60's, and they managed. I just wish I were a better player or songwriter.
Check out Jordan Valeriot's channel Hardcore Music Studio. He has videos comparing high end studio hardware to the plugin versions, different versions of 1176 hardware compressors, and tracking to tape vs digital.
Hi Glenn, I would love to see an episode about the loudness wars. maybe comparing some albums that had a remaster that didn't sound better. Some talk about dynamic range and over compression in the mix and master stages. Love the show, you helped me to realise that I need to practice and not drool over tone wood and pickups. Cheers.
I can't wait for a guitarist to go the full monty and claim that clothes affect the tone.
welllll ACthUalLy............ I once was in a Steve Vai concert, he had a very weird suit full of LEDs and laser. It was probably consuming a hefty ammount of energy, because it generated a shit ton of interference on the guitar's electric signal. So, yeah, clothes did affected the tone :D
Kind of funny but in all actuality probably did affect the tone a little not a lot but there were some interference there..m.@@wido123123
Tone underwear
Tone wig.
Tone diapers. Bet you can hit the brown tone.
The most thing i care about with guitars is how long they stay in tune. Most "tones" seem fine to me.
That's what I keep saying. Anyone who knows what the fuck they are talking about isn't buying a solid body electric guitar for its sound. It's about comfort, tuning stability, and craftsmanship. No one is going to notice a difference in sound, but they'll notice when you're out of tune. They'll notice the dead notes because of a shitty fret job. It's kind of annoying that this debate is still happening.
@bloomtikbloom9593 What are you even talking about?
@bloomtikbloom9593 What you said has nothing to do with purchasing a guitar, lol.
@bloomtikbloom9593Yeah, well you tagged me in it, so the derp is all you. Should have tagged him if you were responding to him.
Yea, I need my guitars to stay in tune.
That’s my favorite Maiden record! Would love to hear the master comparison. Cheers Glen!
For me as well, "piece of mind" is the best !
Still have it on vinyl
That one and number of the Beast are my two favorites. But he is right when they remaster stuff it sounds totally different I mentioned in one of my comments that led Zeppelin had a lot of their stuff remastered and it did not sound as good as the original vinyl.
I have a little home studio with a bunch of gear and a weird thing happened to me the other day. I went into my local Long and McQuades in Markham Ontario and I realized that they didn't have anything that needed. I'm done. I now own everything that i need to write the big hit song. Oh crap! Now i have to do it. Love your show and I've been a subscriber since you were in your early numbers. Keep it going , my friend!
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, class . "That is why you fail" nice one glen , great retort. Thanks for the advice I've just swapped out one of my two v30s in my 2x12 for another speaker and it sounds epic the blend of the v30 and my new speaker is class .
Glad you enjoyed it
Glenn, I have to admit that as a guitarist that you provide great usable information. I do have this to say though, I have replaced pickups for other people and myself and found differences in sound before and after... funny enough, when I recorded those sounds albeit over a crappy phone mic for before and after comparison the difference is almost imperceptible... but still there. You do great work, love the channel.
Love your answer to NeglectedField. Gives praise where it's due, admits what your test doesn't hear, addresses thw differences in method et al. Proper, polite, direct. Nice.
I’ve been mixing older material, some of which has DI guitar tracks from 2 different guitarists, playing at least 3 different guitars each. At the time, i HEARD THE DIFFERENCES WHEN TRACKING!! All my guitars sounded different! All the other guitarist’s guitars sounded different!! And, his pickups were all passive, while i played all actives!
Of course, once i feed them through the same amp sims, it is VERY hard to hear tonal differences. I can hear playing differences, but the “tone”? Not so much. In order to get the tonal separation i wanted? I changed speaker IR’s!! Thanks for all your recording tips, your knowledge has evolved my mixes tremendously! Keep those mix tutorials coming, and live mix reviews real, loud, and full of great advice!!
Those Kyuss albums, I always thought you could FEEL the heat coming from the speakers and how fkn hot it must have been when they recorded
Helps having a rich kid in the band to build a studio.
@@joshuaporterfield6774 what’s the story there ?
I am actually not sure it does. When you go to a recording studio to record for a label, they don't put you in scrubby studios. I am curious what the rich kid comment is about, besides bitterness.
@@DoomsayrIII You weren't aware Josh Homme was born to wealth?
You ever thought about learning sound science? It completely changed my mixes once I grasped the basics. What an exciting time to be alive!
KORN-Untouchables-2006: Johnathan talks ab this album and how when they worked on Issues is when the whole band got really serious ab the sound and production of their music. So when Untouchables started they used the most advanced shit around to make it. I mean that album is so fucking highly Diamond polished it’s crazy. I would love to know what they had and how they used it. Now again I know it’s 2006, but Korn is fucking loaded so they had all the amazing shit out the day that’s probably some really good shit. The studio was Insane and everything in it was insane. I would love to know how that studio time was used.
Gleeeeeeeen! Please bring your testing regime to the bass world!
Blue metallic is the best Tone-paint, why your Harley Benton sounds so great😂🍻
I find it chugs morer with Blue Metallic
My Jackson model 6 is midnight blue and this color is so powerful the EMG pickups don’t need batteries !!!!!!
I bought two identical basswood bodies. One i put a thin coat of polly on. On other i did a coat of sanding sealer, a coat of primer, two coats of green paint, and a top coat of clear to make it all nice and shiny! They both came out wicked cool but they feel nothing alike. Thy thin polly guitar resonates in your hands like crazy! Completely comes to life. The other feels like its struggling to vibrate under all of those paint layers. And it doesn't matter how much difference it makes in the mix because 90% of guitars will NEVER be in a mix. And even the ones that are, you still dont want it to feel lifeless and uninspiring do you? The fact is that different colors require very different spraying procedures. A white pearl metallic will have many more layers of meterial than a plain black one for instance. And a nitro cellulose finnish begins thinning the day it cures and it never stops thinning until its gone. The idea that these things don't make some difference is preposterous!
@@stevenpipes1555Anecdotal data is worthless. Thanks for the essay.
@@narsustv1331 The example may be anecdotal but the principle is not. Every layer of meterial you add will effect the resonant qualities. The makeup of each layer also has an effect. It is scientifically impossible to add something to anything without the original control example changing. This isn't that hard. A bare piece of pine will not vibrate the same way as one with lyers and layers of meterial over it. What if you dipped the body in wet cement? Still no difference in your mind? The problem with this line of thinking is that the sound through the amp is the only thing that matters. But many of us who disagree get as much if not more enjoyment from the resonant feel of the instrument as we do from the amplified sound. And what about all the hours many players spend playing unplugged while watching tv or listening to a podcast. Is there no part of the scientists experiment that takes that into account?
Hey! Saturday morning coffee with Glenn!
Absolutely I would love to see comparisons on remasters. I have definitely gone out of my way to find origiinal CD releases because there was definitely a tonal difference on same equipment.
I might be crazy but I was listening to the first Maiden record a lot through streaming and then when I put the old LP on one day I swear that the guitar tracks were thinner and had a lot less overdrive on the original recording. Seems like more than a remaster happened. But again I haven't done a clean A/B test, it just seemed that way to me in passing.
The tone is in the serial number.
As far as snare sounds go, my absolute favorite (and for tom sounds) is the one on Refused’s album The Shape Of Punk To Come; it just sounds good and does so on every sound system I listen on. I’ve spent my entire time making music trying to figure out how to replicate that snare and toms and I finally figured out a year or two ago that tape saturation was the key along with paralleled channel with a lot of compression and distortion
I don't believe in tonewood, but I DO believe in tone mayonnaise.
I mic up my mayo with a sm7b and a piezo pickup and blend it with my neve console. Gives you those real piano lows everyone keeps talking about.
Great, now I gotta find a tin of tone tuna and a tone onion.
Why aren't you guys talking about how much the mayo vibrates, or doesn't vibrate, in your hands. Because a huge part of the tonewood argument is that some woods resonate differently than others do. Can't you guys feel a difference between a mahogany guitar and a plywood one?! I sure can. Do you guys not have nerve endings in your hands?
Ketchup is not to be forgotten! The Ketchup Song won't lie - it was an instant hit because of those tasty select tomatoes.
@@tweed0929 That's a lie that Heinz 57 wants you to believe! It's not real!
Yeah a "bad Masters" episode would be cool. ❤
Yes to an Is Modern Mastering Killing Our Music episode 🤘 But faaaaakkkk yea to a series of Mixing reviews of epic Metal albums man?? Yah smooth bastid 💪😎
I love the live off the floor sound. It's the sound we go to concerts to hear. Deliverance is another Corrosion record that sounds like that.
The section about the drums being recorded in a foyer is really cool and reminds me of an experiment I'd love to try. Recording in weird places, like the back of an earth mover.
That Yoda quote really kind of nails the point and resonates with me. Unless you’re doing an acoustic song, the drums are the foundation and they need to be as perfect as you can get them, without a glorious drum track you have nothing. Bass has to come in and nail it so the song has any body to it. Only then can you nail the guitars and see how they fit…amp sims and speakers etc. then vocals. You can do it all in different orders but you will most likely fail…your timing will be off from the other instruments, they won’t sit in the mix, no body, something will not feel good and you’ll spend all your time trying to fix broken shit…let’s also not even speak about how hard it is for a drummer to nail a fully loaded track while slamming away on drums with minimal or no reference points.
Glad to have my comment get featured on the show again! And on my birthday no less :)
You should debunk not just tone wood but tone-tapping. I know some builders actually only combine pieces of wood that tap out at certain frequencies.
That is most commonly applied to acoustics. There is nothing "hokey" or "imaginary" about tone woods for acoustics. You tap test tops for best resonances.
@@DJBuglip Wood matters more for acoustics than electrics, but there's a ton of hype and nonsense about tonewoods for acoustics, too. The really important wood for the tone of the guitar is the soundboard (top plate), and it's usually made of an inexpensive, light wood--usually spruce, sometimes cedar. So manufacturers hype the woods used elsewhere in the guitar, which matter much, much less and don't have the characteristic sounds that the marketing says they do. The sound of a piece of wood depends more on its thickness and bracing than on the slight differences between the woods commonly used for, say, the sides or back of a guitar. You can make great guitars with cheap spruce tops and picking the denser back and side woods for their cheapness, or for their rareness and appearance (so you can charge much more money).
@@DJBuglip I’ve seen luthiers do it with solid bodies. Gibson actually claims, or did at one time, to tone tab the best pieces for their custom shop stuff.
Glenn, I think you're right about speaker cabinet dimensions; I inadvertently discovered this when I bought a new TV and took it off the wall and put it in an armoire that happened to fit it just a bit snugly. Whereas I'd had thin, dissipated sound, all of a sudden I had booming, bass-y sound which only improved when I got into the advanced sound controls. I call it the Bose Effect, which relies on a similar technology. Hell, I'm going to put off getting surround sound until Atmos is absolutely required. I really enjoyed today's video and the discussion it stimulated.
Yes to the Iron Maiden comparison! Great video Glenn as usual
We totally wanna see the remastered topic Glen! I feel the mastering war screw things up. I heard a vinil until I was like 30 yo and damn, this shit breathes, not like my cds.
My buddy went to school to make car stereo boxes back in the 90's and he learned the mathematical equations for speaker output to box size and shape , ports and baffles for what results you were after . Build some test cabs Glen!
Hey Glenn! I caught your eye the other day during the livestream when I thanked you for recommending changing speakers to get better guitar tones. You acknowledged it by saying "thanks Ben Arnold," which was super cool to have you mention my name on the show! So thanks for that as well. Anyway, on to my point, the video Kyle made titled something like "Why Changing your Guitar Speakers is Dumb" appeared in my suggested videos feed but I haven't watched it. I'm not subscribed to his channel - nothing against him, just a personal preference. And I can understand looking at guitars and all the associated gear as an investment. I certainly look at my guitars and amps as something that very well may appreciate in the future, so I can certainly grasp that as a concept. Nonetheless, the only way I wouldn't change the speakers in a cab is if I somehow acquired a cab that is - for whatever reason - special, and therefore valuable. I know that when I'm browsing Reverb or a similar sites for cabs, I'm going to be willing to pay more for a 2x12 that has Celestion Alnico Speakers in it, or even other Celestions such as Greenbacks, G12M Creambacks, and G12T Creambacks.
That said, I can sort of see his point, if you have a matching Head and Cab, at least one that really "matches," such as a Vox AC30 Head and the Vox Cab that looks basically just like the AC30 Combo amp. I can see being able to sell those together for more than what you could sell the current Vox production AC30C2 combo for. BUT! Vox, being awesome, already puts great speakers in their amps and cabs. And I feel like this is the case with any Head/Cab combo that is ever going to increase in value. Any Morgan Head and matching Cab is definitely going to increase value as well. They look cool and they come with quality speakers installed. The reason it increases in value, particularly if it goes out of production, is because they did it right straight from the factory. So, if that's the case, I think you have to assume the opposite is also true. If a cabinet - with matching head or not - came with cheap/bad or just not great speakers, then no amp is going to sound particularly good with that cab. So I have a feeling that the cabs people are going to want to change the speakers in aren't cabs that you need to worry about preserving in original configuration because they came out of the factory door without good speakers in the first place.
I currently use a stereo rig as a Hobbyist player (dying to get a band together) that consists of an AC30C2 on one side which is the version with Greenbacks. May go for the Alnico Blues one day, but its hard to justify when the Greenbacks sound as good as they do. The other side is a Morgan MVP66 Head with my "modular" 4x12 cab, which is where I really put your advice to use - the 4x12 is actually two 2x12 cabs - one is a Harley Benton Vintage Cab (which came with V30s, though I've since swapped them out) and the other is a Seismic Audio open back 2x12 cab I bought with no speakers included. In each cab I have one Celestion Ruby and one Fane M65. I could not be happier with the tones I can get!!! I can go clean and clear enough to play Blue Sky (Allman Brothers) to crunchy AC/DC Highway To Hell tones to pretty much whatever sound I want. I grin like an idiot every time I fire up my amps and pick up one of my guitars! I can also absolutely shake my whole house when I'm home alone, which is just so much fun!
I know this has been a book of a post, but I gotta give one shout out in this long post about guitar speakers. I gotta say that when it comes to guitar amps I've owned quite a few, and then about last September I bought my AC30 and thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. And it stayed that way until I got the Morgan MVP66 about 3 weeks ago and set it up as the other side, replacing a Phaez hand-wired amp I was using as the other side of my rig, the Phaez Atticus is also a great amp. The Morgan is the only other amp I've personally played that even might sound better than a Vox. If you can afford it, get yourself a Morgan - as long as you have some decent speakers - or if you're a little tight on funds to snag a Morgan, there's a reason that you've seen the Vox logo on so many stages behind so many famous guitarists. And you can find a great AC30 used for $800 or less!
Yes, please plan a series on mastering. "Headroom", "compressed to death", "wall (war) of sound" etc. You know the drill. That would be greatly appreciated. - Keep it up.
Jim's video on cabinets is one of the most entertaining and informative videos I've ever seen and is a fantastic demonstration of trying things for yourself. Taking things as gospel because you read it on a forum post from 2004 is not the way to do testing!
One of my high school symphonic band directors once told me "sometimes the notes you don't play are louder than the ones you do"
Apparently that applies to the words you don't speak as well. Perfect response, Glenn. 😂
Oh no! Glenn is going to get involved in the loudness wars! Judging on your stance on most things you’re gonna make a lot of people mad, but probably me really happy
I used to be very snubish about my gear or really what I wanted to buy rather than what I actually had, but as I’ve learned about gear, like tube screamers aren’t the only tube screamers I’ve come to realise that at some point I was listening to the gear and not the music, and convincing myself it made a difference that it didn’t. If it sounds good it is good, if it does a job you don’t need, you don’t need it, don’t invent a job to justify a bit of gear and above all remember you learned to play to make music not obsess over gear, so have fun and get to rocking
What happened to those Iron Maiden remasters was the 1990s. Everyone was very into pushing the treble on rock CDs in the '90s. Another good example is Nirvana's In Utero. The original master made in 1993 has the treble really pushed. The 20th anniversary remaster doesn't and sounds like a band in a room. It's far better. Those Maiden remasters were done in 1998. (I actually interned in the mastering studio where they were done, in 1998. But those were done earlier in the year. Also, I was just the intern. Not my fault.) They were done again, in 2015. The hi-resolution version of the 2015 remasters on Qobuz sound like the original records. I would be very surprised if the CDs done that same year don't also sound like the vinyl.
For the guy who wrote/composed from a guitar sound idea: This is great for getting the song written and a demo recording. However, when it comes to doing a final production, you will want to start with the drums and bass then build from there.
However, Glenn was coming from a mixing perspective. When building a mix, getting the rhythm section sorted first will allow the rest fall into place much easier.
RE: "Why your guitar sounds like shit in a mix video" - that's exactly how I learned (as a self-taught beginner to recording) and WHY my guitars sounded like shit in a mix! So thanks a whole damned bunch, Glenn! I already knew from my own testing that pickups, amp sim, cables, string gauge, plectrum, socks, and weather didn't matter (scientifically tested, just trust me™). This video gave me the basic thing I was missing when other sources were talking about extra software, EQ curves, and fancy studio monitors and equipment.
Sometimes, it's the really simple basics that get overlooked and taken for granted.
I struggled to get a decent tone for easy E-standard 6 string before because I wasn't nailing the bass and drum levels in first. That video gave me such quick results that I just went all in for something I'd previously struggled to get non-muddy... and easily got a massive and heavy as heck solid tone for my 7 string using drop G in less than 30 minutes. Thanks so much, Glen. That video opened up the world a ton for me.
Yes, Indeed, Truth IS A Conspiracy!
"Reality, What A Concept!" -Robin Williams
Love the channel, whenever your vocalizing the question, the mute button is close by, keep it rolling
Great show. Priest rules!
I'd definitely be interested in seeing A/B comparison's of remastered stuff. See how much of it is "loudness wars" related. It's funny that you had Maiden mentioned, because I was just listening to the remastered version of Running Free on Maiden's channel and compared it someone who posted the original. I thought the remastered version sounded really good. As a drummer I'm probably a bit biased that way, but the separation in the tracks was noticeably better and I could actually hear the bass drum.
Remastering classic albums is usually “more detail, less mojo”. Example: remasters in stereo of early Stones recordings, when they were actually recorded in glorious mono.
I absolutely LOVE this series. It has changed the way I buy gear and how I recommend gear. I'd like to invite Glenn to come on our channel's podcast to discuss all things music but especially this particular topic. It would be nice to have a discussion and back and forth. I think it could be super helpful as well. So what do you say Glenn? I've already sacrificed the recommended number of goats, now I just need to talk with you. Thanks for this wonderful series. It has been super super helpful.
Would definitely be interested in seeing original recordings and remasters side by side.
Gleeeeen
I wrote the comment last week about being a metal head who is also trying to achieve the Hendrix tone. I realize that you think Hendrix is a relic from the past and this is a metal channel etc. But Might I direct your attention to Kyuss, they make good use of Hendrix tones. I'd also like to add that a great man once said "To be influenced by many makes you great, but to be influenced by everyone makes you original". Or something to that effect. Anyways, love the show.... Cheers 🤘.
You’re remaster point reminded me of a similar thing with Soundgarden’s Superunkown . I had the cd and was listening with my buddy who was a huge Soundgarden fan who also owned it on tape for his car. He complained about the guitars been quiet and I didn’t believe him. He ran home and got his tape and we listened to both on my stereo. The guitars on the tape were much bigger. It was explained to me years later that the album was recorded split at the signal for analog and digital recordings and that probably had something to do with it. I’ve always been curious to learn more. Fuck U Glenn thanks.
There Glenn, I logged in and subbed. You can stop whining now! Your legion grows!
Seriously though, buddy you're a entertaining dude. Critical reviews are much appreciated and valuable in a world that just wants to endless sell us more stuff.
Glenn, when I first purchased a EVH 5153 100 watt head it sound like crap through my cheap Marshall cabinet. One week later I purchased the matching EVH 412 cabinet. You are correct, it was the speakers in the cabinet, night and day sound. That was 6 years ago.
Hi from Japan! 🤘🎌
Yes, by all means, please count this message as my vote for an episode about remasters; that sounds fascinating.
By the way, I did a small spit-take of Coke Zero when your screen saver turned your monitor into a flyby over an airport. 😮😂
How about designing a compressor with controls that make sense to musicians ? 1 control for how fast the compression kicks in. 1 control for how loud you want the signal to get. 1 control for how quiet you want the signal to get. Then 1 control to set the compressors "Fade Out".
I remember when Vapor Trails came out by Rush and the original was either mastered wrong or mixed wrong, because everything was THIS LOUD, the dynamic range was toasted. It was so bad, they literallly remixed and/or remastered it and it's tolerable now.
Such an awful album
Gleeeeeeeen! We've seen a lot about guitar speakers but what about bass speakers? Bass players also love to mix cabs with different sized speakers (a popular combo is a 4 x 10' cab and a 1 x 15' one)
Could you make a video on how speakers affect bass tone?
Testing different bass speakers in different size on guitar could be interesting as well 🤔
Time for Glenn to listen to old versions and remasters, and guess which is which.
Your reaction to the "432Hz tuning" is hilarious! Thank you, Glenn for your posts! I always enjoy them!...ALSO, the best sounding "Les Paul" style guitar I've ever owned is an Ibanez Art100 ( not Artcore) double cut that I found at a yardsale for $60. Go figure.
Glenn, it's acoustic shortcut! When you have an open cab the bass waves bend around the cab (due to them being long waves), hit the speaker from behind and cancel themselves out acoustically! This is why guitar cabs are allowed to be open, while HiFi speakers are not. This is where the lo-end scoop comes from. Hope I could help, since I didn't see the mentioned video.
Comparing masters is a great idea for a series, especially getting a perspective from an engineers standpoint. Megadeth’s 2004 remasters are infamous for being considered worse than the originals. I was today years old when I found out Killing is my Business has been remastered AGAIN
This channel has been a gold mine of production information for a long time and I’m here for it every episode! Does he ask you to check out sponsored products? Sure. But, who cares? He isn’t begging for money on here. He isn’t saying his way is the best way or only way to do things (even though it likely is the best way lol). He provides very fair / balanced info, and frankly, most of the time unless a guitar is a complete piece of garbage, with the way guitar manufacturing is in 2023-2024 with CMC machines etc… a cheap Chibson can absolutely come close or better than a Gibson. Same for Fender or most brands. The amp definitely plays the biggest part of the signal chain. Pedals and effects as well. The guitar itself, just isn’t that big of a deal.
Had to take a few screenshots of the answer to 432hz question - this will be the reply from now on to people who are ornery, obnoxious, or just plain rude. Thank you for these gems!
Definitely do an episode where you investigate remasters of albums and try to figure out what went wrong with the sound.
Mastering is just volume and compression. With vinyl, the gain had a limit or the stylus would not be able to handle it. You can have much higher gain with digital masters than with vinyl records.
So mix is the volume of the tracks and master is the complete volume and compression of the entire mix. Mastering was more important with vinyl.
This channel is extremely informative 👏 Being a musician for most of my life I can say, Glenn is worth a listen. Much intellectual property 🎉
Heh, the comment at 6:49 is hilarious, because my wife's $150 Squier Strat with the bridge and middle pickup together (like a humbucker) sounds almost identical to my Fender Strat HH on its bridge pickup. Mine does sound a bit beefier, but I'm not sure if that's because it has an actual bridge humbucker, or if it's because of the heavier gauge strings I use.... Worth a test for sure!
Also! 10:18 is some wise words. JHS always says "if it sounds good, then it is good" or something like that. And that's the most important thing!
"Vote with a Bullet" by CoC
Damn, thought I was the only one who loved that song.. (I know, I know I wasn't the ONLY one but I was one of the few in my metal community). That song just crushes.
Woods are getting better and better every year. We get mahogany so well treated that is has great structural properties, not to mention modern baked maples which are absolutely fantastic.
It's not much of a "tone thing" than a structural integrity property ... like necks that don't deform and warp anymore, and of course, the more rigid and the stiffer it is the better it, which is why we use wood instead of jelly to build pianos and guitars (and even cast iron for pianos).
These treated woods not only have better structural properties, but also tend to be a little lighter (less moisture due to treatments).
And when you only play metal stuff (endless gain), the guitars can be made of anything (plastic, concrete, cardboard ua-cam.com/video/7Oo2H-W7d6A/v-deo.html , plywood, etc...) it all winds up sounding the same, so the only thing which matters is that the color of your guitar matches the shade of blue of your hair.
I would love the Bad Masters Analysis series!
I’d love to see an investigation into the last 20 years of mastering 🤘🏻🤘🏻
I used Fender J basses for 20+ years. When I was shopping for a lightweight Kiessel bass, I spent months researching tone woods, pick-ups, bolt-on vs. neck-thru etc. I concluded the wood didn't matter and just went with the Kiessel Modern J bass. But when I got my Kiessel, I do hear a slight difference and definitely "feel" the difference between the traditional Fender alder body vs. Kiessel roasted swamp ash. I kind of regret not paying extra for a maple top to bring back some of that bright tone I was used to.
Same thing happened with the Megadeth remasters. I listened to Countdown to extinction until the tape in the cassette broke. I bought the remastered cd and it sounded like Nick Menza had been replaced by a drum machine.
🤘 For British Steel and Blues For The Red Sun! Awsome effing albums!
As far as Costinnovac's comment... I also start with guitar and build the track around that... I get my guitar ideas first, then I build a drum track and a bass track to suit... but I still record guitar last and adjust the guitar tone to fit. I suuuuck at guitar and also mixing/mastering (im learning).... but double tracking and adjusting guitar tone to fit the mix are super simple things I learned from this channel that go a LONG way in getting the best result out of my suck, there's really no excuse.
The Piece Of Mind comparison would be awesome!
If you happened to read this. I watched it twice. The main one is on tv. The one I'm not watching is on my phone. Makes it easier for me to remember if I watched it later on when I'm looking for more videos.
Year & A Half by Metallica should still be on here to watch. Love watching that. I once made a bootleg cut where i didnt have to sit through the videos.
Glenn, can you make a video showing how to properly swap out (A/B-ing) speakers? I have this image of person X swapping out speakers and saying "oh, wow, these sound completely different!" while all along not paying attention to mic placement. Ideally, neither the mic or the cabinet should move even an 1/8" to get an accurate test. The only thing that can move is the actual replacement of the speaker which is very hard to do - keeping the mic & cab in one place while changing a speaker. As soon as either the mic or cab is altered, the test is null since placement has changed.
I've even seen someone mistakenly swap out the speaker - they mistakenly put the same speaker back in and did not use proper A/B testing, moved the cab to swap speakers, placed the cab back in "position" and were amazed at how the sound changed!
The position of mic, cab and speaker MUST be in the exact unaltered same position to properly A/B a speaker.
GLLLEEEEEEEEEEEENNNN!!!!!!!!!
You should get into ham radio. It’s amazing how many guitarists do not understand frequency and amplification. As well as speakers and how circuitry works.
Save money and build your own stuff!!
Would love to see a shoot out between original recordings and remasters. As a vinyl guy, I always prefer original pressings over remasters.
Glenn, here's an IDEA for the next BLIND (sort of) test. Record DI tracks from various guitars and SHOW how every guitar's DI track sounds like (this not a blind test part). And then run every DI track through high-gain AMP and do a BLIND test
For me the takeaway from those guitar shootouts wasn’t that they all sounded the same, it’s not to let preconceived ideas and price influence you.
In every blind test I have had one I would pick over the others.
The trick is not to care which one it is. Don’t be caught up in snobbery or inverse snobbery. The one that sounds right to you is the right one for you.
I have noticed the trend of remasters sounding crap for a few years now. The Black album remaster was no where near as good as my old one. The reason I was told is because the modern remasters of everything are aimed towards streaming. Or the producer turns up the volume on parts that are supposed to be quiet.
I have 8 guitars in the studio. 6 and 7 string.
They all have the stock pickups. Sometimes I need an active pickup sound, sometimes I want a less compressed passive pickup sound. But otherwise? The most important part is amp, effects, and cabinet when I am recording. No, I am not buying expensive pickups to make a slight EQ shift.
Another awesome guitar tone is on Edge of Sanity Spectral Sorrows. Perfect death metal with combo of sm57's and Royer Ribbon mics
Love to see the recommendation of "Kyuss- Blues for the Red Sun." I'm a big fan of the stoner rock/metal genres, do you have any videos on recording tones for that genre of music? I'd love to see some videos on nailing those Desert-esque tones and if you change anything in your approach in recording them compared to normal metal music.
On the topic of guitar sound since you recently did that blind test shootout, all the sounds sounded good to me, I wouldn't be disappointed with any of those sounds for tone. However, there was a time before where I used exclusively humbucker guitars and didn't have any single coils and I got in a mood where I wanted to play some SRV/Hendrix, I was playing the right notes on my Les Paul copy, but for some reason it didn't feel right. I had asked a buddy to loan me his strat to test out and I noticed the sound/playability was what I was looking for when I wanted to get that sound out of a guitar. Do you think that if you had added a single coil guitar to that blind test it would get immediately identified from the 4 humbucker style ones?
Im old enough (and smart enough) to know that when i spend $2,000 on a guitar, I'm paying for a quality build that will last for generations. When i use the whammy bar, it wont go so badly out of tune I need to spend the next ten minutes tuning it. But I'm not under any delusions that the extra $1,000 will make it sound twice as good. I want a well built, quality instrument, that will last a long time. I don't believe in tone wood 😆
Yes, please do an interview with John Custer!
Blind is one of my all time favorite albums. CoC kills it
I think for that 3rd comment (the long one) If you are noodling on your guitar and come up with a good riff and decide to record it do it, Then put in your drum and bass to go with it, then mute or remove the guitar track and quantify the drums and bass to nail down the timing. Now, you have your rhythm section to replay your groovy riff to and keep it in time.
I play with a saxophone player. We play technical death metal (with sax, Wound Collector if you're interested) and sometimes when it's hot, the sax player will also prefer 442Hz instead of the regular one because it matches better. Not a big deal, but I never got it. But maybe that's because I have no concept of wind instruments.
I'm be interested in a discussion on mastering. I like my music a bit on the crispy side. I can't tell you how many records I've bought that were a disappointment in high end frequency response - making the music a bit dull sounding.
But if you do some comparisons, I'd suggest adding the vinyl in the fray. Rumor has it that early CD were just ripped from the master tapes intended for vinyl. Those masters were intended to compensate for the frequency response of the cutting lathe, which tended to make CDs sound harsh. (Metal? Harsh? Might be great marriage partners.) So the real question - does the remastered CD sound closer to the original vinyl then the original CD?
I don't have superhuman hearing, and I love blind tests, I've always been pretty accurate at finding the nuance differences between the products being tested. Glenn is correct about the differences being small. I'm pretty perceptive and can hear it in the room or an isolated guitar track pretty easily. But in a mix? Definitely not. I think the points he brings up are smart for people who are actually recording and on a budget. If you're well off, then get whatever makes you warm and fuzzy.
We need to spend some time convincing tonewood snobs that they should be recording in a log cabin in the woods. Brick for better sustain, but won't be as warm.
Cave
Fiber glass isulation would like a chat with you about brick and warmness.
@@luisguillermoviruesdelgadi182 Might work for an Ibanez, but would create a tinny humbucker feel on a real guitar. I would have to try it to know for sure.
@@luisguillermoviruesdelgadi182
On a gamble, i got a 100$ DS 18 pro-x12. 4ohm. Its frequency is 63.5hz-11.3hz. Just wanted something "left field" basically.Built a little custom heel toed 1x12 sealed cab. .75 air space, put a little poly fill in it,broke it in and its surprisingly awesome for Heavy, speed guitar. Precise, clear , even and accurate is best way to describe it. Its 450w rms, if you like hot tubes😉
When you want to talk about massive differences in sound just listen to the original recording of. "...And Justice For All". then the properly mixed "And Justice For Jason" where you can hear what Jason Newsted's bass tracks should've sounded like
Here here. When i heard the remix it just about blew my socks off. The album is great, sure, but mixed like that it would have been one of the greatest!
Don't forget Ozzy's No More Tears album.I think it's one of the best sounding albums ever.Also check out the Aeons Black album by Swedish (I believe)death metal band Aeon. It has one of the most clear ,bone crushing, heavy rhythm guitar tones ive ever heard
Finally we got the intro back!!!
… bit off topic but Glens shirt rocks! If you know you know.
Several experiences have made me have a habit of preemptively avoiding anything that says "remaster" on Spotify...