How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

[zionstrat]

I'm mainly a classic rock blues guy who's had a love/hate relationship with thick guitars... I love short scale 2 buckers for leads and power chords but I also love to mix in lighter articulate rhythms and have to fight the slop.

Over the years, I've built many guitars designed to provide both sides of the equation, but right now I am more interested electronic solutions and what you do to get the best of both worlds...

Here's many of the things I have tried with mixed results...

Fade pedal between amps... One of my first and best solutions but lots of work. Works great in modeling land as well.

Back off volume... Less crunch can help but significantly changes tone.

Wah...the original Tom Schultz solution... Using the wah to make small moves between mid increase and decrease... It works great but very finicky and too essy to slip into actual wah effect when u don't want it.

Eq pedal.. same idea as wah but i never found the right balance...

Variable mid boost/cut... Great solution when modeling with a pedal. Always imagined this would work well in analog with a dedicated pedal...like a wah but fixed q cut boost.

Split/parallel to self/spin a split... By far the most common mod we do for thinning.

Bass cut... Probably my favorite thinning mod... We do a lot of these when customer has the ear and time for us to try various caps.

Combining coils from each bucker, out of phase, etc.... Can work for specific rigs but needs to be customized...

So how do you manage thick fat leads vs muddy rhythm with your short scales?

Any and all input appreciated!




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[Chistopher]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

Probably the series/parallel knob or the bass cut on my guitars. On of these days I might consider doing both on the same knob.

 

[jeremy]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

on my lp for example, i run paf type pups. tone full up and volume down for articulate rhythm playing and volume up and tone backed down for fat leads. amp/rig has a lot to do with what works best. split or parallel options work well with some rigs too. i have a pgn in the neck of a hamer monaco elite with a p/p for series/parallel, parallel sounds great for cleaner tones

 

[NegativeEase]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

EQ pedal is what I always us when I need to instantly pull the guitar in or out of the slop.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

on my lp for example, i run paf type pups. tone full up and volume down for articulate rhythm playing and volume up and tone backed down for fat leads. amp/rig has a lot to do with what works best. split or parallel options work well with some rigs too. i have a pgn in the neck of a hamer monaco elite with a p/p for series/parallel, parallel sounds great for cleaner tones

Yep, Jeremy, if I had combined all your previous posts I probably could have figured out your approach- Great summary.

 

[NegativeEase]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

Also, I would submit that cleaning up a sound for a guitar by itself versus with a recording or with a live band can 3 very separate challenges -depending on the context of each.

 

[ICTGoober]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

The "original Tom Scholz solution" was not the wah. When they mixed those Boston albums, they cut the bottom off all the guitar sounds - leaving only the mids and highs. They did this to get more than 20 minutes of music on each side of the LP (bass frequencies are wider and take up more space). If might have sounded like a wah - but it wasn't.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

The "original Tom Scholz solution" was not the wah. When they mixed those Boston albums, they cut the bottom off all the guitar sounds - leaving only the mids and highs. They did this to get more than 20 minutes of music on each side of the LP (bass frequencies are wider and take up more space). If might have sounded like a wah - but it wasn't.

Yeah when I say original I'm talking pre-recording. if anybody could find a copy, I would love to see the first Tom Schultz interview with guitar player again. I'm pretty sure it was that article where he explained the wahwah spot search.

Of course he made major changes in the production environment and with his devices later however if I am remembering the correct article he explained how he was able to originally find the mid cut and mid boosts on a Wawa.

And again assuming it is that article, he talked about the saddest Les Paul experience I think I've ever heard. When they started he had to 2 Les Paul's. I may be wrong but I think they were deluxe's routed for a paf in the bridge. His tech took one of them home for an intonation adjustment forgot about it left it in the car in a Boston winter and it killed it.

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[Gtrjunior]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

Are you having a mud issue with your Splawn?
I can’t even imaging mine sounding muddy and too thick..?

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

I switch from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup.

 

[Mincer]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

I love A2-based pickups, but with certain Fender tonestacks, they can get muddy quickly. I usually have some way to cut the coils, or use a coil from one pickup along with a coil from another, in parallel. That seems to clear things up.

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

I go for thick, period. Clarity is overrated.

 

[LLL]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

EQ in front, drop the lows/lo-mids somewhat to remove the fat.

Alternatively, a cocked-wah pedal (not a wah pedal) can help and you can set it and forget it (Fulltone Wahful, etc).

Speaking of Scholz and his tone secrets, check out this vid I did (and yes, the wah does make an appearance):

If you go past the playing, I go over step-by-step how to do this tone. Pay close attention when I get to the wah part; it's very odd (about 14:30 mark).

(have the same guitar tracks in a vid without backing tracks as well)

Pretty sure I have the GP interviews (and others) if you need it. Scholz definitely mentions using a wah, and mentions it later
(disguised as a "narrow band eq").

 

[Francois]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

I have a short scale (24"2/3) with HB that was quite muddy but with excellent sustain. My way to manage this is :

A - I use it for single note slide (for me this means ultra high action with an extended nut)

B - I thrashed the stock Gibson T-Tops and replaced them with P-Rails.

And I am quite happy with result

 

[VinceT]

How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

My two preferred “on-guitar” solutions are series/parallel (on my Music Man Reflex) and Bass Contour (on my Reverend guitars and as a mod to my Rickenbacker 360).

Pedal wise, you may want to take a look at the Haunting Mids by JHS. Also, I find that Klon-type circuits at low gain shine in this application.


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[Ace Flibble]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

I leave it to the amp and/or pedals. That's what multiple channels and pedals are for. With 24" guitars my main priority is to get them holding tune, and in terms of pickups I just go for ones with weak enough magnetic fields which won't drag on the strings. It's too easy for short scales to get dragged off-pitch, especially by neck pickups. Short scale, flat-top bolt-ons will never have quite the full sustain or the clarity of longer scales or bigger bodies so when I use my Mustang or any other 24"ers, instead of trying to fix it on the guitar, out come the EQ pedals set to an M-shape, and the bass and mid knobs on the amp both get pushed up a point.

In longer/bigger guitars I often try something fancier—nearly all my guitars have some kind of 'party trick' switch—but nothing consistent, and nine times out of ten I end up just letting the natural difference between neck/middle/bridge dictate the response of the guitar and let the amp's channels handle the overall style of tone. For example my main guitar (ESP Horizon) is HSH with a Custom, Hot Rails, and Jazz. The Custom does all distorted rhythms of any type, the Hot Rails does the most distorted solos and all cleans, and the Jazz does lower-distortion leads. No tone controls, don't touch the volume controls; the three pickup positions handles it. Then my main amp, a Marshall JVM, has a clean channel, mid-gain lead, high-gain rhythm and high-gain lead all ready to go in tandem with the pickup switch. With three differently-voiced pickups and four dedicated channels, you don't need to be twisting bass cuts and whatnot.

I mean, as I said, most of my guitars do have some kind of special function to them and the majority of those are various forms of low-cut/mid-cut/bright boost switching. But most of the time they get left alone 'cause you can't be playing a note when you're twiddling a knob...

 

[zionstrat]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

Are you having a mud issue with your Splawn?
I can’t even imaging mine sounding muddy and too thick..?

Oh never problems with the Splawn! Tight, clear cleans and balanced crunch.

This is kind of a revisit to the issue that we bump into most of the time with client Les Paul's and just wanted to hear how other people deal with the problem.

Thanks for asking and we got to catch up via messaging eh?

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[Gtrjunior]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

Oh never problems with the Splawn! Tight, clear cleans and balanced crunch.

This is kind of a revisit to the issue that we bump into most of the time with client Les Paul's and just wanted to hear how other people deal with the problem.

Thanks for asking and we got to catch up via messaging eh?

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Absolutely brother...

 

[zionstrat]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

My two preferred “on-guitar” solutions are series/parallel (on my Music Man Reflex) and Bass Contour (on my Reverend guitars and as a mod to my Rickenbacker 360).

Pedal wise, you may want to take a look at the Haunting Mids by JHS. Also, I find that Klon-type circuits at low gain shine in this application.


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Yeah, the Reverend bass cut is perfect. Example here...
https://www.guitaryoudreamabout.com/videos?wix-vod-comp-id=comp-jfvcdv70#

Would have never imagined a bass cut on a 360 because i don't think of them as fat... What's it sound like?

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[zionstrat]

Re: How do you manage thick guitar sustain and mud?

EQ in front, drop the lows/lo-mids somewhat to remove the fat.

Alternatively, a cocked-wah pedal (not a wah pedal) can help and you can set it and forget it (Fulltone Wahful, etc).

Speaking of Scholz and his tone secrets, check out this vid I did (and yes, the wah does make an appearance):

If you go past the playing, I go over step-by-step how to do this tone. Pay close attention when I get to the wah part; it's very odd (about 14:30 mark).

(have the same guitar tracks in a vid without backing tracks as well)

Pretty sure I have the GP interviews (and others) if you need it. Scholz definitely mentions using a wah, and mentions it later
(disguised as a "narrow band eq").

Great stuff! Would love to reread that Sholtz interview if you have it!

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