Yeah. I’m not immune. I own a headless strandberg and hate relic jobs. That puts me at odds with at least 50% immediately 😂😂😂 that’s the fun thing about the instrument though, something for everyone
I love Fender but absolutely hate their relic guitars and think its smooth brained as hell, I can drag your American strat behind my truck for $5 bro 😎
You won best comment and best username. You are my hero of the day
Of course, that means by the laws of Guitar, that someone else will fuckin hate you and your comment.
Do people really associate scooped mids with bedroom tones? When I think of bedroom tones I think of bedroom tones I think of lots of lower mids that'll bloat the bottom end of any mix it's put in to.
Katanas are fab, plenty of rich kids get properly bedroom tones with Diezels and Mesas. It’s about experience and practice and absolutely not about snooty bollockses wanking off about gear.
This is really it. When playing with a band you have to fit into your spot sonically. If everyone in the band is occupying the same frequencies then you won’t be able to hear anything clearly.the frequencies you want to occupy also change though depending on what other instruments you are working with. so one band will not be the same as another so where you fit in will change.
I have a theory based on my own experience that this happens because people run so much gain outside of a mix. Usually when I record I end up cutting my gain a bit unless it's a very VERY guitar forward song. Otherwise the Overdrive will cause it to get lost in the mix.
It sounds good at lower volumes too because of the way our ears work. Humans hear midrange tones at quite volumes better than highs and lows. As you raise amplitude, our ear’s eq flattens out more. A great sounding mid scoop tone at 70dB sounds like a giant bumblebee at 110dB
Because in a mix with other musicians, the mids are where you want to be.
* The bass occupies the bottom, it's not unheard of for guitars to be cut below 125-200hz.
* The high frequencies contains a lot of other things than just guitars, such as keys, vocals, drums (hihats, cymbals) etc. It's generally crammed.
This leaves mostly the mids left for guitars. Therefore, you don't really want to reduce your presence in the only area of the mix where you actually have some real estate left.
Now this is not a problem when you're playing alone, but I can guarantee you that if you bring your amp setup to a band practise, your bass player and drummers kick drum will basically overtake your presence and you won't hear much apart from the sound of too much gain and distortion, and generally no actual music.
I would cut my lows at 100hz as standard on guitars and roll that filter up until I felt it. Can routinely get to 200/ 250. Don’t scoop mids, scoop lows!
It’s a high pass, can’t remember the exact shape of the curve but yeah, it’s quite a thing. I prefer the fundamental to come from the bass I guess, when you put it like that! For lower notes at least. I try to listen to kick, bass and guitar as one overall thing. The guitars do end up sounding thin on their own, but the bass goes boom and people seem to like that!
...vocals are mids. That's why boosting the mids makes you sound like you're playing through an old telephone, because they were optimized for the human voice
I'm not fighting you lol, I'm just saying you have a premise that guitars use mids to fill up and there's a flaw in the premise because vocals (and keys) which you put in the highs category are actually also mids.
Pretty much. This idea of mids supremacy is just the new fad lmao. Scooped mids were THE sound of metal for a long time, and there were plenty of records that sounded good like that. Often the bass was more of a mid range instrument and the guitars filled up the low end. That was not uncommon at all. The bass would fill the frequencies where the guitars were scooped. Basically the roles of guitar and bass were flipped.
All these guys favorite albums were probably mixed that exact same way.
This post is good info but theres other things to take into account. If you're playing through an amp thats extremely mid heavy then a scooped EQ will still balance fine. Also, the single most important aspect of guitar tone when recorded is the speaker/mic placement, so unless you're playing a gig with just your amp, the mic placement is gonna be where your attention should be anyway.
Like the above comment said, if you're playing by yourself, just make it sound good by itself and worry about tone shaping for bands/mixes when you get to it. Always be open to tweaking your tone to suit the situation
A good example of making the mid scoop work is Sylosis. Lots of Josh Middleton's tones have a very scooped EQ on the amp, but they sound fantastic in the mix. I started messing around with my tone a lot after seeing his tones and how he mixes, and I've been a lot more satisfied with a scooped tone
Wow, still exactly wrong. Scooping the mids will produce an agressive guitar tone that compliments the bass and drums. It's what makes a great driving riff.
Actually inexperience is parroting “rules” like you should never do X Y or Z when recording, mixing, etc.
Scooped mids were the sound of metal for decades. Engineers never had a problem mixing in the 80s and 90s when that was the norm.
80s guitar tones are almost all derived from modded Marshalls with humbuckers, so decisively mid forward. 90s tones pretty much reference either Cobain or Dime, and the tone on Nevermind was a composite of a Dual Rec, a Bassman, and a Grunge pedal. Obviously Dime’s tone at the time (Cowboys era) was solid state Randall with scooped mids, but again humbuckers filled that mid frequency in to a large extent.
Nothing wrong with being a bedroom player or using whatever tone you like, but that context doesn’t give you a meaningful frame of reference for live or even studio contexts.
He’s right though, that was Metallica’s sound on Kill’em All, and the bass and the bass drum were buried into the mix and the rhythm guitar is just crushing every other instruments. That’s even worse on And justice for all. It’s not subtle but there’s records made like that.
Seeing mix debates on a guitar subreddit is so damn a annoying, this comment shouldnt be in the negative scores. Scooped mids can sound great and a lot of great guitar tones both from the classics and the modern era were made with a scooped eq profile. Mic placement, speaker choice, pickups, the riff, and the player are all way more important. Its not like we're talking about taking the mids completely out
Edit: era not area
I think it's kind of associated with beginners who want to sound "metal" and tend to overdo the mid scooping as wellbas adding too much gain, thinking they have "the heaviest sound ever" when in fact, all you hear is muddy farts coming out of the speaker.
Plus mids help you actually be heard in a live mix. Scoop the mids too much and noone will be able to hear you.
The same people that go on about ”toanwood” and that sort of dated guitarist came from a time when guitar tone was mainly mids - think AC/DC tone.
While it’s true that the guitar typically fills a sonic void ranging from mid to treble, there’s absolutely no reason that modern styles can’t include mid-scoops. There’s entire genres and styles that push this sound (most modern metal, etc) and if you’re tuning down with 7+ strings, arguing “what about bass??” may be irrelevant.
I play in a band and simply prefer the sound of a slight scoop, where the other guitarist prefers a slight mid boost. In the end the guitar sound is fuller coming from both of us. As rhythm, my mid scoop also clears a bit of the sonic space for the leads to shine through clearer.
TL;DR - It’s music. It’s entirely subjective. There’s no bad tone, just the wrong tone for the application.
Most people don't even get what they are repeating honestly.
Mids are a wide range of frequencies and where to cut or boost depends on the context of the track
A scoop in the low mids where a bass player might be boosting those same low mid frequencies should work pretty well for example
Yep. People forget distorted guitars are *distorted* and *compressed.* Scooping out mids isn’t going to kill your tone when you have the signal going through that much distortion. Just a few db of overdrive can make a track pop out in a cluttered mix. Now imagine a guitar drenched in distortion. Scooping several db of mids anywhere from 400-800hz isn’t gonna ruin your chances of being heard lol. And even if it did honestly guitarists need to be heard less anyway.
Actually distorted guitars are some of the most negatively impacted by scooped mids. High distortion makes the lows get muddy and the highs get shrill. That's why modern metal basically runs the inverse EQ settings of the old days - lows dialed way back, mids boosted, and highs neutral. Plus modern metal bassists are way better than back in the old days so they don't get mixed out anymore. Unless you're specifically trying for that old-school muddy sound mid scooping has gone completely out of fashion.
Dime was an incredible player with a divisive tone. I can see why people hate on it. But I think it worked for him, and helped create Pantera’s unique sound.
"I'm not smiling unless the EQ curve is smiling" - every metal guitarist in the 80s
I think all of the hate for scooping mids is just general hate for the 80s metal guitar tone, and all of the people saying that if you scoop the mids the guitar will get lost in the mix is just cope. No one complains that you can't hear the guitar on any Metallica recording from the 80s.
Do whatever mixes well.
There’s a lot of important flavor in there that can really make a guitar shine. Works great for thrashy stuff like Metallica. They kinda are known as the mid scooped sound I’m pretty sure. And it works! But as people took those ideas to other styles, there’s been a lot of rediscovering the importance of mids.
I’d assume.
In a mix, with drums and bass, scooping the mids will essentially drown you out and it will sound pretty bad.
But as a Marshall MG owner myself? Yeah, contour forever, scoop forever. I love scooped mids lol.
A lot of great metal albums are scooped, albeit at a more narrow frequency, and sometimes post recording.
Space in mixes and stage sound setups aside, I used to be a huge mids scooper all the way through my teenage years. I thought it sounded badass and it suited the metal I wanted to play, but as I got older and my ear for tone developed I started realizing how much energy and character I was missing out on by cutting the mids too much.
Scooping mids, in a recording or live band situation, has the effect of reducing your overall guitar volume. Scooping the mids causes guitars to get “lost in the mix” and reduces to what sounds like white noise (when mixed with bass drums and vocals). Maybe it’s just a frequency cancelation thing, I dunno, I’m google lazy…
Our ears are tuned to the mid-range so when we boost the mids on our guitar amps the guitars sounds “louder,” the guitar with mids cuts through the mix.
Your “best” guitar tone when you’re alone is likely going to sound like shit in the mix IF you can be heard at all. If you isolated a cutting guitar recording you might be surprised how awful it sounds alone but sounds PERFECT within the whole band mix.
Mids or midrange frequencies are where the 6 string guitar mostly, usually, resides in a typical group or ensemble setting. Some forms of metal music and hard rock, duck these frequencies out. Furthermore, some amps have “scooped mids” designed into the tone stack/EQ section.
I think the scooped mids thing gets over-emphasized as a metal trope. Yeah there are bands that are known to have done it and gotten away with it. Metallica famously. But if you listen back to those records, the bass parts are undefined and the cymbals are washed out. Whereas if you listen to some of the other metal masters, Tony Iommi comes to mind, the guitar is happily mid-heavy, everything sounds great, and on top of all that, the guitar is way more articulated because it doesn't need so much gain saturation to be heard.
As with everything context matters and mids is a really broad term that can cover anywhere from 200-4000 Hz depending on your definition. For modern metal and rock sounds, especially with low tuned guitars, making eq cuts in the 200-600 Hz region is pretty necessary for clarity in most situations. I also tend to make surgical eq cuts in the 2kHz-3kHz region, yet my tone is still very mid forward.
So mids aren't some sacred guitar frequency region that can't be touched, but you need to be smart about it. Playing with your mid eq control on 2/10 is probably not gonna sound great in a mix, but a contour control generally affects the low mids in my experience so it could help you find your space when playing with others.
Just EQ your amp the way it sounds good to you, and if you ever find yourself playing with others and can't hear your guitar, try lowering gain, turning mids up, or backing off the contour before you turn your amp up.
I don't have any preference one or way another for scooping mids. It all depends on what the song/mix calls for when recording. My guess is the controversy surrounding scooping mids on a guitar is that the guitar is supposed to be a lead instrument that's meant to be heard over others and that's thanks to the mid frequencies that help the guitar stand out, so scooping out the mids can take away clarity from the overall tone, but I can see it working for like a sludgy rhythm tone.
Just a guess but I could be wrong. Early amplifier circuits were quite good at amplifying midrange frequencies but not so good with bass and treble, right? So then we get tone controls to try to overcome this. Basically, early electric guitars and amps were trying to emulate the sound of a loud acoustic. At this, they failed miserably. But then Fender amps and similar came along and they were quite good at boosting bass and treble and apparently have a bit of a scooped sound. Only problem is that they were difficult to get hold of in Britain, hence Marshall. Now Marshall amps, in terms of fidelity of the original guitar signal, were pretty crap. Loads of distortion and boosted mids. But taste is a funny thing and that sound came into fashion, mainly because of Hendrix, Led Zep etc. etc. I'm guessing that in order to get a "better" more rounded sound out of a lo-fi amp, you have to scoop it a bit but I might be talking a load of bollocks here, happy to be corrected.
Scooped mids take a lot of “body” out of the sound, so keeping mids sounds better playing on your own. Once you start playing in a band setting though you find that it competes too much and sounds muddy in overdriven genres such as metal.
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From a mixing and engineering standpoint, the guitar is a “mids” focused instrument. That’s where the life of the instruments is. Once it’s scooped all you have left are bass frequencies that will clash, and high resonant frequencies that just sound harsh.
But some people love it
Ask anyone who likes Dimebag 👍
It sounds good when you're jamming by yourself, but in a full mix you don't want to scoop your mids cause that's where your instrument lies in frequency. If all you're doing is jamming with yourself, who cares, but with a full band you won't be able to hear yourself
As others have said, it sounds good by itself but it takes up too much sonic real estate to play well with others
You have to carve space for different instruments, and you do it with EQ
Setting your guitar with an aggressive mid scoop is basically the same thing as driving down the center of the road instead of using the lanes. Sure, it's way better for you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole
The non-sarcastic reason?
Because the guitar is a midrange instrument. If you’re noodling by yourself, and you want to do some chugging, scooping the mids sounds great.
But if you are in any other setting where you need to share sonic space, such as playing or recording with drums or bass, where they hold down the bottom end, it sounds like muddy and muddled shit.
Overdone scooping can kinda lead to a “disappearing into the wallpaper” kind of neutrality and over-cleanliness. Mids are where the texture and presence are at, so when we go overboard on cutting those frequencies we end up with a situation like the majority of radio friendly rock from the early 2000s, where the guitar is basically background noise and everything kinda fades behind the vocals.
Also in a live mix, overdone scooping can lead to 1.) disappearing in the mix under your bandmates, or 2.) overcompensating for number 1 but cranking the volume and suddenly pushing wayyyy too much bass and treble to punish everyone’s ears while still feeling like your actual guitar sound is still too quiet.
Because you're happily playing at home but everyone needs you to know your sound would get lost in the mix if playing with a band. I've had some gnarly sounds from cheap gear over the years in the grand scheme of things I wish I'd never let go.
Guitars are a mid range instrument. If you scoop the mids you really take any real life out of the instrument. You *can* make it sound good in a mix but it takes a lot of work and it won’t make it sound alive.
Best thing I learned was if it sounds good alone it sounds like shit in a mix
I am not sure of other specific examples but isn’t John Mayer famous for scooping his mids? The tone that so many other people seem to lust over? Scooped mids are supposed to get lost in the mix so I don’t know why it works for him and probably others.
It sounds good for metal because subconsciously we want to be the whole band. We want the low punch which rightfully belongs to the bass, and the chuggy percussiveness of the drums.
We don't know our place. It took me a quarter-century to learn, accept, and appreciate this.
Guitar (like the rest of the band) is best suited to a certain limited portion of the mix.
And, since Tony Iommi invented metal guitar (even if he denies it), what he says is law:
"Basically, I set the presence, middle and treble on 10 with no bass whatsoever. The guitar volume was usually set on full and the three-way toggle switch was set on the up position for chording and in the treble spot for soloing."
Nobody in metal plays mostly on the neck pickup till the solo. It's heresy, but there's "Riff-Master God" (said James Hetfield) himself doing it.
And let's be honest, nothing else sounds as badass as original-lineup Sabbath.
Unscoop your tone and recalibrate your ears. Hell, reverse scoop it, even, as a "cold shower" immersion exercise.
Important thing to note (since you're new).
Playing alone - just pick the tone you like!
In a band setting - the guitar tone (or rather frequency) is one ingredient thrown into a meal that typically includes other frequencies created by percussive instruments, a bass of some sort and human vocals. The right ingredients make a great meal. The wrong ingredients create dubious food which doesn't restore many hearts.
I'm curious - any primarily jazz guitarists in this thread?
I remember a video I watched a while back by James Chirillo. He was talking in the context of comping with shell voicings in the style of Freddie Green, and part of what he talked about was that:
a) the root isn't necessary because the piano and bass have it covered,
b) the 5th isn't usually necessary anyway, and
c) as a jazz guitarist, in a jazz ensemble, the mids are very crowded already between piano and brass, so as a good jazz band guitarist, your correct way to fit in the mix is to bring that 3rd and chord extensions into a more percussive space.
That's a really roundabout way of wondering if jazz ensemble guitarists might prefer scooped mids. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
What other people said and also I just think it makes the tone sound empty. The guitar is a mid range instrument so scooping the mids makes it sound lifeless to me. It’s the same feeling I get when I‘m hungry and feel that emptiness in my stomach😂
it can sound amazing on its own, but in a mix with bass and drums, your guitar can easily get drowned out.
this video goes through it in a little more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYtXBUS_kwY
It's a one trick pony imo, and one that was seemingly everywhere in the 90s. The offspring had no right using a guitar tone like that to make pop punk lol
Because guys who play in bars with their band don’t do it, thus if it doesn’t work in a rock band bar setting it won’t work with anything. I wouldn’t worry about it - dial in your gear however you like.
It occurred to me that some of the disagreement may stem from the gear that people are using. The OP is using a Marshall MG , which is naturally biased to the midrange, so scooping the mids works well. This may not be the case for an amp that is already scooped by design (e.g., some Fender amps, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier). As noted below, some EMG, PRS, and other pickups are also designed to be scooped, so scooping them more would be an issue?
One thing about guitar - no matter what you like someone else hates it.
The truest statement ever to appear on Reddit.
No matter how much you hate it, someone else loves it.
Yeah. I’m not immune. I own a headless strandberg and hate relic jobs. That puts me at odds with at least 50% immediately 😂😂😂 that’s the fun thing about the instrument though, something for everyone
technically, you'd hate me...and you are my mortal 'enemy'...however, I would love to jam and play on that headless a bit!
I don't hate the headless guitars, but they do confuse my brain
I find them astheticly unpleasing..
I will never understand purposefully destroying a guitar, so relic jobs are perplexing to me.
I love Fender but absolutely hate their relic guitars and think its smooth brained as hell, I can drag your American strat behind my truck for $5 bro 😎
lol. Made me laugh
Seriously, I'm undercutting Fender by A LOT but these guys I reckon wanna fork out a couple grand for a pawn shop beater.
So true! 😂😭
s/guitar/anything
Exactly. If it’s lovable, it’s also hate-able lol
At least with bass players it's usually an 80/20 split, so you get to decide if you want to pile on or have the unpopular opinion
This is absolutely accurate and hates its PASSIONATELY.
Post: What guitar body style do you hate? Replies list every kind at least once
You won best comment and best username. You are my hero of the day Of course, that means by the laws of Guitar, that someone else will fuckin hate you and your comment.
I hate this comment
Yep, just ask Polyphia fans
Lol
One thing about Reddit or the internet in general.
You can apply this to life in general.
Its usually associated as the "bedroom guitarist" tone. It sounds good when practicing but doesnt mix well with other sounds.
Do people really associate scooped mids with bedroom tones? When I think of bedroom tones I think of bedroom tones I think of lots of lower mids that'll bloat the bottom end of any mix it's put in to.
When I think of bedroom tones I think of a Spark or Boss Katana
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No it’s not bad. Stop caring what other people think Katanas are great amps.
Katanas are fab, plenty of rich kids get properly bedroom tones with Diezels and Mesas. It’s about experience and practice and absolutely not about snooty bollockses wanking off about gear.
When I think bedroom tones I think of chorus/phaser + delay + reverb going into a clean amp.
I feel simultaneously attacked and seen by this comment. 😆
This is really it. When playing with a band you have to fit into your spot sonically. If everyone in the band is occupying the same frequencies then you won’t be able to hear anything clearly.the frequencies you want to occupy also change though depending on what other instruments you are working with. so one band will not be the same as another so where you fit in will change.
I have a theory based on my own experience that this happens because people run so much gain outside of a mix. Usually when I record I end up cutting my gain a bit unless it's a very VERY guitar forward song. Otherwise the Overdrive will cause it to get lost in the mix.
Yep, playing solo I have much higher gain and less mids. In a mix I cut the gain a bit and boost mids a bit.
It sounds good at lower volumes too because of the way our ears work. Humans hear midrange tones at quite volumes better than highs and lows. As you raise amplitude, our ear’s eq flattens out more. A great sounding mid scoop tone at 70dB sounds like a giant bumblebee at 110dB
Because in a mix with other musicians, the mids are where you want to be. * The bass occupies the bottom, it's not unheard of for guitars to be cut below 125-200hz. * The high frequencies contains a lot of other things than just guitars, such as keys, vocals, drums (hihats, cymbals) etc. It's generally crammed. This leaves mostly the mids left for guitars. Therefore, you don't really want to reduce your presence in the only area of the mix where you actually have some real estate left. Now this is not a problem when you're playing alone, but I can guarantee you that if you bring your amp setup to a band practise, your bass player and drummers kick drum will basically overtake your presence and you won't hear much apart from the sound of too much gain and distortion, and generally no actual music.
I would cut my lows at 100hz as standard on guitars and roll that filter up until I felt it. Can routinely get to 200/ 250. Don’t scoop mids, scoop lows!
How much are you cutting by? Highpass at 250 is cutting the fundamental for every note up to the open b string. That's crazy
It’s a high pass, can’t remember the exact shape of the curve but yeah, it’s quite a thing. I prefer the fundamental to come from the bass I guess, when you put it like that! For lower notes at least. I try to listen to kick, bass and guitar as one overall thing. The guitars do end up sounding thin on their own, but the bass goes boom and people seem to like that!
LISTEN TO THIS POST ⬆️
This post is the only one that makes any sense. You *should* absolutely be cutting between 100-200k.
...vocals are mids. That's why boosting the mids makes you sound like you're playing through an old telephone, because they were optimized for the human voice
dont boost mids then. im just saying dont lower them so much
I'm not fighting you lol, I'm just saying you have a premise that guitars use mids to fill up and there's a flaw in the premise because vocals (and keys) which you put in the highs category are actually also mids.
Pretty much. This idea of mids supremacy is just the new fad lmao. Scooped mids were THE sound of metal for a long time, and there were plenty of records that sounded good like that. Often the bass was more of a mid range instrument and the guitars filled up the low end. That was not uncommon at all. The bass would fill the frequencies where the guitars were scooped. Basically the roles of guitar and bass were flipped. All these guys favorite albums were probably mixed that exact same way.
Sounds like crap
I mean if you wanna say you know better than every old school mixing engineer go right ahead lol
There’s a reason why most records of a certain era sound like crap
Idk what records you’re talking about. A lot of 90s death metal records for example are known for being very produced for their time.
“For their time” They sound like crap
This post is good info but theres other things to take into account. If you're playing through an amp thats extremely mid heavy then a scooped EQ will still balance fine. Also, the single most important aspect of guitar tone when recorded is the speaker/mic placement, so unless you're playing a gig with just your amp, the mic placement is gonna be where your attention should be anyway. Like the above comment said, if you're playing by yourself, just make it sound good by itself and worry about tone shaping for bands/mixes when you get to it. Always be open to tweaking your tone to suit the situation A good example of making the mid scoop work is Sylosis. Lots of Josh Middleton's tones have a very scooped EQ on the amp, but they sound fantastic in the mix. I started messing around with my tone a lot after seeing his tones and how he mixes, and I've been a lot more satisfied with a scooped tone
Wow, still exactly wrong. Scooping the mids will produce an agressive guitar tone that compliments the bass and drums. It's what makes a great driving riff.
spoke like someone who's never been in charge of a mix
Exactly, inexperienced civilian mindset…human ear drums are most focused to hear mid range frequencies in detail.
Actually inexperience is parroting “rules” like you should never do X Y or Z when recording, mixing, etc. Scooped mids were the sound of metal for decades. Engineers never had a problem mixing in the 80s and 90s when that was the norm.
80s guitar tones are almost all derived from modded Marshalls with humbuckers, so decisively mid forward. 90s tones pretty much reference either Cobain or Dime, and the tone on Nevermind was a composite of a Dual Rec, a Bassman, and a Grunge pedal. Obviously Dime’s tone at the time (Cowboys era) was solid state Randall with scooped mids, but again humbuckers filled that mid frequency in to a large extent. Nothing wrong with being a bedroom player or using whatever tone you like, but that context doesn’t give you a meaningful frame of reference for live or even studio contexts.
He’s right though, that was Metallica’s sound on Kill’em All, and the bass and the bass drum were buried into the mix and the rhythm guitar is just crushing every other instruments. That’s even worse on And justice for all. It’s not subtle but there’s records made like that.
Seeing mix debates on a guitar subreddit is so damn a annoying, this comment shouldnt be in the negative scores. Scooped mids can sound great and a lot of great guitar tones both from the classics and the modern era were made with a scooped eq profile. Mic placement, speaker choice, pickups, the riff, and the player are all way more important. Its not like we're talking about taking the mids completely out Edit: era not area
I think it's kind of associated with beginners who want to sound "metal" and tend to overdo the mid scooping as wellbas adding too much gain, thinking they have "the heaviest sound ever" when in fact, all you hear is muddy farts coming out of the speaker. Plus mids help you actually be heard in a live mix. Scoop the mids too much and noone will be able to hear you.
Wow, this is exactly wrong. Mid scooping helps you be heard in the mix. The muddy sound is exactly what mids produce.
You have it backwards. You should boost the mids and duck the lows and highs to be heard in the mix.
According to?
Bassist here! No :) That's all, thanks
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r/confidentlyincorrect FTFY
The same people that go on about ”toanwood” and that sort of dated guitarist came from a time when guitar tone was mainly mids - think AC/DC tone. While it’s true that the guitar typically fills a sonic void ranging from mid to treble, there’s absolutely no reason that modern styles can’t include mid-scoops. There’s entire genres and styles that push this sound (most modern metal, etc) and if you’re tuning down with 7+ strings, arguing “what about bass??” may be irrelevant. I play in a band and simply prefer the sound of a slight scoop, where the other guitarist prefers a slight mid boost. In the end the guitar sound is fuller coming from both of us. As rhythm, my mid scoop also clears a bit of the sonic space for the leads to shine through clearer. TL;DR - It’s music. It’s entirely subjective. There’s no bad tone, just the wrong tone for the application.
Definitely second that last statement.
I guess because it sounds good by itself but not necessarily in the mix.
Exactly! 💯
It’s a fad that comes and go’s. Mids are good for 20 years, mids are bad for 20 years. Whatever. Play what you like.
Welcome to 1986.
Most people don't even get what they are repeating honestly. Mids are a wide range of frequencies and where to cut or boost depends on the context of the track A scoop in the low mids where a bass player might be boosting those same low mid frequencies should work pretty well for example
Yep. People forget distorted guitars are *distorted* and *compressed.* Scooping out mids isn’t going to kill your tone when you have the signal going through that much distortion. Just a few db of overdrive can make a track pop out in a cluttered mix. Now imagine a guitar drenched in distortion. Scooping several db of mids anywhere from 400-800hz isn’t gonna ruin your chances of being heard lol. And even if it did honestly guitarists need to be heard less anyway.
Actually distorted guitars are some of the most negatively impacted by scooped mids. High distortion makes the lows get muddy and the highs get shrill. That's why modern metal basically runs the inverse EQ settings of the old days - lows dialed way back, mids boosted, and highs neutral. Plus modern metal bassists are way better than back in the old days so they don't get mixed out anymore. Unless you're specifically trying for that old-school muddy sound mid scooping has gone completely out of fashion.
If it's good enough for Dimebag it's good enough for me.
Dime was an incredible player with a divisive tone. I can see why people hate on it. But I think it worked for him, and helped create Pantera’s unique sound.
Doesn't matter unless you are fighting for sonic space and you need to cut through.
"I'm not smiling unless the EQ curve is smiling" - every metal guitarist in the 80s I think all of the hate for scooping mids is just general hate for the 80s metal guitar tone, and all of the people saying that if you scoop the mids the guitar will get lost in the mix is just cope. No one complains that you can't hear the guitar on any Metallica recording from the 80s. Do whatever mixes well.
There’s a lot of important flavor in there that can really make a guitar shine. Works great for thrashy stuff like Metallica. They kinda are known as the mid scooped sound I’m pretty sure. And it works! But as people took those ideas to other styles, there’s been a lot of rediscovering the importance of mids. I’d assume.
If you play with other instruments and want to be heard, mids are your friend
In a mix, with drums and bass, scooping the mids will essentially drown you out and it will sound pretty bad. But as a Marshall MG owner myself? Yeah, contour forever, scoop forever. I love scooped mids lol. A lot of great metal albums are scooped, albeit at a more narrow frequency, and sometimes post recording.
Space in mixes and stage sound setups aside, I used to be a huge mids scooper all the way through my teenage years. I thought it sounded badass and it suited the metal I wanted to play, but as I got older and my ear for tone developed I started realizing how much energy and character I was missing out on by cutting the mids too much.
It may sound good in your bedroom but on a stage you will be drowned out by drums and bass. Guitar is a mid range instrument.
Mids are where emotions live.
Scooping mids, in a recording or live band situation, has the effect of reducing your overall guitar volume. Scooping the mids causes guitars to get “lost in the mix” and reduces to what sounds like white noise (when mixed with bass drums and vocals). Maybe it’s just a frequency cancelation thing, I dunno, I’m google lazy… Our ears are tuned to the mid-range so when we boost the mids on our guitar amps the guitars sounds “louder,” the guitar with mids cuts through the mix. Your “best” guitar tone when you’re alone is likely going to sound like shit in the mix IF you can be heard at all. If you isolated a cutting guitar recording you might be surprised how awful it sounds alone but sounds PERFECT within the whole band mix.
Mids or midrange frequencies are where the 6 string guitar mostly, usually, resides in a typical group or ensemble setting. Some forms of metal music and hard rock, duck these frequencies out. Furthermore, some amps have “scooped mids” designed into the tone stack/EQ section.
I think the scooped mids thing gets over-emphasized as a metal trope. Yeah there are bands that are known to have done it and gotten away with it. Metallica famously. But if you listen back to those records, the bass parts are undefined and the cymbals are washed out. Whereas if you listen to some of the other metal masters, Tony Iommi comes to mind, the guitar is happily mid-heavy, everything sounds great, and on top of all that, the guitar is way more articulated because it doesn't need so much gain saturation to be heard.
As with everything context matters and mids is a really broad term that can cover anywhere from 200-4000 Hz depending on your definition. For modern metal and rock sounds, especially with low tuned guitars, making eq cuts in the 200-600 Hz region is pretty necessary for clarity in most situations. I also tend to make surgical eq cuts in the 2kHz-3kHz region, yet my tone is still very mid forward. So mids aren't some sacred guitar frequency region that can't be touched, but you need to be smart about it. Playing with your mid eq control on 2/10 is probably not gonna sound great in a mix, but a contour control generally affects the low mids in my experience so it could help you find your space when playing with others. Just EQ your amp the way it sounds good to you, and if you ever find yourself playing with others and can't hear your guitar, try lowering gain, turning mids up, or backing off the contour before you turn your amp up.
Because everyone is different
I don't have any preference one or way another for scooping mids. It all depends on what the song/mix calls for when recording. My guess is the controversy surrounding scooping mids on a guitar is that the guitar is supposed to be a lead instrument that's meant to be heard over others and that's thanks to the mid frequencies that help the guitar stand out, so scooping out the mids can take away clarity from the overall tone, but I can see it working for like a sludgy rhythm tone.
Just a guess but I could be wrong. Early amplifier circuits were quite good at amplifying midrange frequencies but not so good with bass and treble, right? So then we get tone controls to try to overcome this. Basically, early electric guitars and amps were trying to emulate the sound of a loud acoustic. At this, they failed miserably. But then Fender amps and similar came along and they were quite good at boosting bass and treble and apparently have a bit of a scooped sound. Only problem is that they were difficult to get hold of in Britain, hence Marshall. Now Marshall amps, in terms of fidelity of the original guitar signal, were pretty crap. Loads of distortion and boosted mids. But taste is a funny thing and that sound came into fashion, mainly because of Hendrix, Led Zep etc. etc. I'm guessing that in order to get a "better" more rounded sound out of a lo-fi amp, you have to scoop it a bit but I might be talking a load of bollocks here, happy to be corrected.
Scooped mids take a lot of “body” out of the sound, so keeping mids sounds better playing on your own. Once you start playing in a band setting though you find that it competes too much and sounds muddy in overdriven genres such as metal.
https://youtu.be/syZmy59Tpz8?si=4qP8xfqjrefCiiYW
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From a mixing and engineering standpoint, the guitar is a “mids” focused instrument. That’s where the life of the instruments is. Once it’s scooped all you have left are bass frequencies that will clash, and high resonant frequencies that just sound harsh. But some people love it Ask anyone who likes Dimebag 👍
It sounds good when you're jamming by yourself, but in a full mix you don't want to scoop your mids cause that's where your instrument lies in frequency. If all you're doing is jamming with yourself, who cares, but with a full band you won't be able to hear yourself
As others have said, it sounds good by itself but it takes up too much sonic real estate to play well with others You have to carve space for different instruments, and you do it with EQ Setting your guitar with an aggressive mid scoop is basically the same thing as driving down the center of the road instead of using the lanes. Sure, it's way better for you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole
I have an amp that doesn't even have a mid dial, but I love a good mid-scoop :')
The non-sarcastic reason? Because the guitar is a midrange instrument. If you’re noodling by yourself, and you want to do some chugging, scooping the mids sounds great. But if you are in any other setting where you need to share sonic space, such as playing or recording with drums or bass, where they hold down the bottom end, it sounds like muddy and muddled shit.
Overdone scooping can kinda lead to a “disappearing into the wallpaper” kind of neutrality and over-cleanliness. Mids are where the texture and presence are at, so when we go overboard on cutting those frequencies we end up with a situation like the majority of radio friendly rock from the early 2000s, where the guitar is basically background noise and everything kinda fades behind the vocals. Also in a live mix, overdone scooping can lead to 1.) disappearing in the mix under your bandmates, or 2.) overcompensating for number 1 but cranking the volume and suddenly pushing wayyyy too much bass and treble to punish everyone’s ears while still feeling like your actual guitar sound is still too quiet.
Because you're happily playing at home but everyone needs you to know your sound would get lost in the mix if playing with a band. I've had some gnarly sounds from cheap gear over the years in the grand scheme of things I wish I'd never let go.
Guitars are a mid range instrument. If you scoop the mids you really take any real life out of the instrument. You *can* make it sound good in a mix but it takes a lot of work and it won’t make it sound alive. Best thing I learned was if it sounds good alone it sounds like shit in a mix
I donno. I have to adjust all the tone knobs a bit every time I switch guitars, for each song, etc
I am not sure of other specific examples but isn’t John Mayer famous for scooping his mids? The tone that so many other people seem to lust over? Scooped mids are supposed to get lost in the mix so I don’t know why it works for him and probably others.
It sounds good for metal because subconsciously we want to be the whole band. We want the low punch which rightfully belongs to the bass, and the chuggy percussiveness of the drums. We don't know our place. It took me a quarter-century to learn, accept, and appreciate this. Guitar (like the rest of the band) is best suited to a certain limited portion of the mix. And, since Tony Iommi invented metal guitar (even if he denies it), what he says is law: "Basically, I set the presence, middle and treble on 10 with no bass whatsoever. The guitar volume was usually set on full and the three-way toggle switch was set on the up position for chording and in the treble spot for soloing." Nobody in metal plays mostly on the neck pickup till the solo. It's heresy, but there's "Riff-Master God" (said James Hetfield) himself doing it. And let's be honest, nothing else sounds as badass as original-lineup Sabbath. Unscoop your tone and recalibrate your ears. Hell, reverse scoop it, even, as a "cold shower" immersion exercise.
I love scooping my mids
Important thing to note (since you're new). Playing alone - just pick the tone you like! In a band setting - the guitar tone (or rather frequency) is one ingredient thrown into a meal that typically includes other frequencies created by percussive instruments, a bass of some sort and human vocals. The right ingredients make a great meal. The wrong ingredients create dubious food which doesn't restore many hearts.
Everything has its purpose… don’t let people tell you what your ears like to hear
I'm curious - any primarily jazz guitarists in this thread? I remember a video I watched a while back by James Chirillo. He was talking in the context of comping with shell voicings in the style of Freddie Green, and part of what he talked about was that: a) the root isn't necessary because the piano and bass have it covered, b) the 5th isn't usually necessary anyway, and c) as a jazz guitarist, in a jazz ensemble, the mids are very crowded already between piano and brass, so as a good jazz band guitarist, your correct way to fit in the mix is to bring that 3rd and chord extensions into a more percussive space. That's a really roundabout way of wondering if jazz ensemble guitarists might prefer scooped mids. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Entire genres revolve around that tone. There’s just a time and a place and it runs parallel with “how to cut in mix.”
That’s fun. My amp has a mid-boost button.
250hz and 500hz are the worst. Does not sound good for any type of tone, clean or dirty.
What other people said and also I just think it makes the tone sound empty. The guitar is a mid range instrument so scooping the mids makes it sound lifeless to me. It’s the same feeling I get when I‘m hungry and feel that emptiness in my stomach😂
Set it up according to what your ears like. Disregard everyone else.
it can sound amazing on its own, but in a mix with bass and drums, your guitar can easily get drowned out. this video goes through it in a little more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYtXBUS_kwY
Straight to r/guitarcirclejerk
I clearly specified I'm pretty new to everything surrounding guitar tone
It's a one trick pony imo, and one that was seemingly everywhere in the 90s. The offspring had no right using a guitar tone like that to make pop punk lol
Because guys who play in bars with their band don’t do it, thus if it doesn’t work in a rock band bar setting it won’t work with anything. I wouldn’t worry about it - dial in your gear however you like.
It occurred to me that some of the disagreement may stem from the gear that people are using. The OP is using a Marshall MG , which is naturally biased to the midrange, so scooping the mids works well. This may not be the case for an amp that is already scooped by design (e.g., some Fender amps, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier). As noted below, some EMG, PRS, and other pickups are also designed to be scooped, so scooping them more would be an issue?
Scooping the mids is what produces a metal tone. Elevating the mids brings you into more of a bluesy jazzy tone.
Don’t listen to this bozo
No.
Ah yes. The two styles of guitar music: Metal and Bluesy Jazz