Guitar Tone too bright and thin

[randomman123]

I recently did a recording with my big band and noticed my tone is sounding very bright and thin. The thing that surprises me is that I have everything on my amp at 1 or 2 and my tone knob on the guitar is at 3. Does anyone know what the problem can be? What can I do to make my tone fatter and darker? I use a Gibson ES 335 with D'addario EJ 21s and use a blue chip jazz iii style pick. The amp is an Evans AE 100. Thank you.

-Zane

[vinlander]

EJ21 are described as bright round wounds, have you experienced with flats like ecg25 ?
Also playing with pickup height could help as if too low can tend to sound thinner

[Groyniad]

the evans is the most adjustable amp in the universe

so its very easy to have it set too bright - not realizing that you can also set it up so its too dark and fat

get in touch with steve at evans and ask for tone knob help - people can help you on here too - to find the dark settings

[Groyniad]

and jazz guitars tend to be 3 3/8'' deep - not thin like a 335....

[Little Jay]

and jazz guitars tend to be 3 3/8'' deep - not thin like a 335....

A 335 is capable of producing very fat and dark tones!

I am a bit confused, please clarify: you find your tone always bright and thin or you only find yourself thin sounding in the recordings?

If it's only the recordings then it's probably bad microphone placement or EQ by the recording engineer.

[Doublea A]

I have had great success altering the tone of a couple of thin line telecasters by changing the capacitor.


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[Franz 1997]

the evans is the most adjustable amp in the universe

so its very easy to have it set too bright - not realizing that you can also set it up so its too dark and fat

get in touch with steve at evans and ask for tone knob help - people can help you on here too - to find the dark settings

This is dead on; try treble at 0, and turn up the 'depth' knob to around 2 o'clock, with bass and 'body' around 4. This would even makes a banjo sound dark and fat, so I'm sure you can get great 335 sounds with an AE100

[Sam Sherry]

Two points:

a) Band sounds great! Guitar sounds fine -- sorry you're not enjoying it as much as you might.

2) Translating a great sound at home into a great sound elsewhere is The Guitarist's Unicorn.

iii) Your sound would have been totally different (and much more "generic recorded guitar") if the engineer had cranked up the compressor. Personally, I think s/he achieved a nice sound with a lot of air for you and it's a sound that stays out of the way of the piano.

....) The two cheapest adjustments you can make to thicken up your tone are to use the rounded corners of your pick, and to use your fingers instead of your pick.

[docbop]

Where are you picking try closer to the neck to fatten the sound. Changing your pick angle can change sound too. Also as another suggested adjusting the pickup height can change a lot. When not happy with sound I will keep my pickup screw driver next to me when I practice and tweak the pickup height and maybe the screw heights now and then, it may go on for weeks till I'm found sound I like.

[Little Jay]

Ah, now I listened to the recordings. I find the guitar sounds quite nice, but I think I know what you mean. I have an ES-333 (almost identical to the 335) with Classic 57s and the way your guitar sounds in the recordings is a bit a-typical for an ES-335 with Classic 57s.

But still my question remains: is it just the recording or do you find your guitar too thin sounding in general?

[Stringswinger]

Zane,

The playing sounds great. The tone could be warmer and fatter.

Easy changes:

Try 13 flats from TI

Pick closer to the neck

Zero the treble on the amp and turn up the bass

Expensive changes:

Change amp to something with a 12 inch speaker

Change guitar to a full hollowbody with a built in humbucker

IMO, there is no way to get a thinline guitar with roundwounds played through an amp with a small speaker to sound warm and fat at big band volume levels.

[Runepune]

Do you think what comes out of your amp sounds thin? There's no problem for an audio engineer to make thick into thin, if that's what you think

[pauln]

Try lowering your pickup considerably, turning the amp up louder than you need, and coming down on the guitar volume.

Dropping the pickup increases its "aperture" - the length of string sensed is longer, giving a more complex tone similar to the sound of a big body jazz box.

Raising volume on the amp lets it "breath a little deeper" even with a lowered signal from the guitar - more depth and character.

Also, if you are using a high quality cable (like the $100 Mogami Platinum or similar), try a $12 cable - they tend to be noticeably darker.

[Runepune]

Also, if you are using a high quality cable (like the $100 Mogami Platinum or similar), try a $12 cable - they tend to be noticeably darker.

Depends entirely on total cable capacitance. It baffles me that they don't provide info on capacitance per unit length with instrument cables, as it is the only thing making audible difference. Or...not really, as that would prevent them from charging stupid amounts and claims of magic properties

Cable capacitance chart

[randomman123]

Ah, now I listened to the recordings. I find the guitar sounds quite nice, but I think I know what you mean. I have an ES-333 (almost identical to the 335) with Classic 57s and the way your guitar sounds in the recordings is a bit a-typical for an ES-335 with Classic 57s.

But still my question remains: is it just the recording or do you find your guitar too thin sounding in general?

I took the recording to my teacher at school today and he said that my tone does not sound like that in real life. So the way the guitar was recorded is the reason why the guitar is sounding thin and bright.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Center the mike on the speaker, then? And push it close to use proximity effect?

[omphalopsychos]

I was just going to say it sounds like mic placement and amp settings more than anything. But that's very humble of you to bring this up in the technique forum.

[rpjazzguitar]

I recently did a recording with my big band and noticed my tone is sounding very bright and thin. The thing that surprises me is that I have everything on my amp at 1 or 2 and my tone knob on the guitar is at 3. Does anyone know what the problem can be? What can I do to make my tone fatter and darker? I use a Gibson ES 335 with D'addario EJ 21s and use a blue chip jazz iii style pick. The amp is an Evans AE 100. Thank you.

-Zane

Playing is nice!

I think I hear what you're concerned about, although it sounds ok.

If the engineer adjusted the guitar EQ for comping, he might have chosen a thinner sound because there's so much else going on in the band. But, then he might not have re-adjusted to get the solo to sound warmer. I also hear it as pretty dry. Maybe a hint of reverb would help warm it up a bit?

The only other thought I had is that it's possible you'd have gotten a warmer sound if you turned the amp (or headphone volume) higher so that you might unconsciously adjust your picking to a lighter touch. Sometimes picking hard seems to make the sound a little thinner. But, some players like that sound. Robert Cray, for example, uses a thin compressed sound (to my ears) and it works great for him.

[rio]

Depends entirely on total cable capacitance. It baffles me that they don't provide info on capacitance per unit length with instrument cables, as it is the only thing making audible difference. Or...not really, as that would prevent them from charging stupid amounts and claims of magic properties

Cable capacitance chart

Wait, what?? 24 years of playing and I always thought the cable's affect on tone was a myth propagated by Monster Cable et al to get people to play 100 bucks for a cable. I am very interested in any info on this.

Regarding the recording, is your amp miced or is it just stereo mics and not anything directly on your amp? One of the best ways to get a good recorded sound is to work on it yourself to see what sounds good. Get a mic and a cheap recorder and start messing with mic placement to experience what the differences in position and distance do to your recorded tone. Good gear would be nice of course but if you have no interest in recording anything then just get a used sm57 and the cheapest used zoom recorder you can get - it doesn't need to be hifi, it just has to have a mic you can move and be able to record it to listen back to evaluate differences.

If the amp is not being miced directly then there are other things you can do to fatten up your tone but being that your teacher said you don't sound like that in person then I don't know that there is much that is within your control other than change guitars. Semi hollows can sound great and I am not knocking them but the recorded tone you have here would not come out of a hollowbody. It might be bad in other ways if the recording is not good! But the thinness and overall does have a solidbody/semi hollow sound to it. Darkening up your guitar shouldn't be hard though, even with rounds. Get a set of half rounds if you still want some round sound, 13 on the high E minimum, and shape the end of your pick so it is not so sharp. Blue Chip picks come to kind of a point/edge on one of their bevels. I was having a similar problem and shaping it down so that there is no edge and a round point at the end darkened things up considerably.


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[Little Jay]

All well-meant advise on playing techniques, strings, picks, cables and stuff, but it's the recording.

So it comes down to mic placement, type and brand. And recording technique and mastering.

It's out of your hands so it seems!

[Runepune]

Wait, what?? 24 years of playing and I always thought the cable's affect on tone was a myth propagated by Monster Cable et al to get people to play 100 bucks for a cable. I am very interested in any info on this.

No wonder, since the cable industry is the land of myth and magic. In most all audio applications, cables don't make audible differences (apart from noise/bad shielding, bad termination etc), but with our beloved passive electric guitars capacitance makes a real difference. Luckily, price doesn't reflect capacitance.

Here's a recording of a Tele with a low and high capacitance cable:


Lowpass and resonant peak is shifted with capacitance:

[Hatim]

Sounds to me as the guitar was recorded with direct out instead of using a mic in front of the speaker. I hear indeed no air.
Or wrong placement of the mic.
It is something technical. Not you or your guitar .

Hans

[rpjazzguitar]

Here's a recording of a Tele with a low and high capacitance cable:

[/QUOTE]

Tele is a good choice to illustrate a capacitance issue. Tele's are very bright. If that's the sound you want, you'll leave the tone knob up all the way. If you want to hear the impact of capacitance, probably nothing better than a Tele because the Tele has a lot of highs to begin with.

BUT, if you roll off treble with the tone control,like a lot of jazz players looking for "dark", you're adding capacitance. Why would you pay extra for low capacitance cable if you're simply going to add capacitance intentionally?

I know some players insist that there's some other kind of mojo in an expensive cable. I can't hear it.

[KirkP]

Wait, what?? 24 years of playing and I always thought the cable's affect on tone was a myth propagated by Monster Cable et al to get people to play 100 bucks for a cable. I am very interested in any info on this.

Capacitance matters (capacitance per unit length times length). Mechanical properties matter. Many other marketing claims are myths, but that would be another topic.

[Cunamara]

Getting back to the OP's point- one other thing is that much of your signal is masked by the sounds of the drums, bass, horns, etc. What the audience hears is what makes it through all the other signals. I also find I have to play brighter at gigs than I do at home.

For the cable stuff, capacitance is what effects tone. The other marketing BS is BS.