Guitar tone is one of the most complex things most guitarists will have to deal with. There are plenty of guitarists that want to look at a guitar and make a blanket assumption about the sound (or ‘tone’) it produces.

The truth is that the amp and settings are always more important than the guitar itself for creating sound! Today we’re going to discuss the ways in which the guitar itself does affect the tone, and use ear training MP3s to demonstrate the sounds.

Before we dive in – how big an impact do the amp and settings really have? The following example is the same guitar and the same equipment, just with the settings altered. You’ll hear that there’s a lot of tone variation possible without changing the equipment itself.

Warning: Some of the tracks on this page have loud distorted sections – do not turn your volume up too high, especially if listening on headphones!

The strong effect amplifier settings can have

Electric Guitars

When it comes down to the guitar itself, the most noticeable difference is going to be the type of pickups on the guitar. Most other aspects of the tone of a guitar can be adjusted or compensated for with the right equalizer adjustments (see the Frequency Fundamentals course for more information), and those are subjective tone differences.

Electric Guitar - Listen for the different types of pickup

The 60Hz hum created by single coil pickups, on the other hand, can be a desirable or undesirable component to the tone. Click to read the rest…

Missed the start of the series? Catch up here.

Last time around we looked at the basic controls of the compression effect, a core part of dynamics control in audio. This week we’ll look at some specialised variants: Limiters, Expanders, Gates, and Multi-Band compressors. Then… more listening!

Limiters

Limiters are in essence compressors with very high ratio settings – as high as “Infinity:1″!

The primary use of a limiter is not to manipulate, change or restructure a signal’s dynamics, but rather to contain them! It limits the peak of the signal from exceeding a predetermined setting. This is usually done to prevent overloading or clipping a recording device/mixer or P.A. system. A good limiter has no sound of its own. You shouldn’t even know it’s on. The only way you would know, is if it was turned off and you heard the clipping and distorting that it was protecting you from. Past that, once turned on, you would simply miss the clipping and distorting, and nothing more. Limiters are (or at least should be) the ultimate silent partner.

Note: Limiters are one of the key ingredients used AND abused in mastering studios.

Limiter Examples

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Following on from the previous quiz on Percussion Frequencies, we’re opening up a new quiz today: covering Frequency Bands and Harmonics.

Once you’ve got to grips with the starting material in the Frequency Fundamentals course, you should find you’re getting a good sense of where different frequencies lie in your hearing range. The second half of the course then introduces the 10 standard bands of frequencies used when analysing audio and making adjustments to the frequency balance:
Click to read the rest…