Doubling Made Easy - What is a fat guitar sound and how do I reproduce it?
LearningOne of the most powerful ways to make a track sound bigger and more impactful is by doubling it. The quintessential example of this is the doubled rhythm guitar part, which can really fatten the soun…
Gadgets for Guitar Players - 10 Cool Accessories for Every Guitarist
LearningGuitarists are well-known for their countless effects pedals, exotic strings and other not-always-indispensable thingamajigs. So, here's a list of 10 useful and/or eccentric toys that you can buy wit…
Impressive Compression - The Best Compression Pedals for Guitar and Bass
LearningFor those who have a tendency to hammer their electric or bass guitars with a heavy attack, or can't play consistent rhythm parts throughout an entire song, a compressor might be the solution. A comp…
Slide Guitar Quick-Start Guide - Basic techniques for slide guitar playing
LearningHere are the essential techniques and basic information you need to get started playing slide guitar
Heavy Guitar Sound Basics - How To Get A Metal Guitar Sound
LearningDue to its violent nature, heavy metal needs a particularly polished guitar sound or it might become unintelligible. Here are several tips to achieve a heavy and accurate sound at the same time.
You Can Get Great Sounds When You Go Direct - Strategies for DI Guitar Recording
LearningIf you polled a group of engineers and producers, asking them what’s the best way to record electric guitar, probably 99% of them would say by miking an amp — preferably a tube amp that’s turned up r…
Basic Instructions For Getting a Sound of Destruction - How to Get a Punk Guitar Sound
LearningAh, punk! Some say it's enough to pick a guitar, an amp, a jack, and a strap (the longer the better), crank it all up and it should sound like it's meant to.
How To Get a Crunch Sound - The Basics To Making Your Electric Guitar Sound Crunchy
LearningAfter having found your clean sound, let's now look at how to color your sound with a bit of distortion.
How To Set A Guitar Amp To Get A Clean Sound - How To Get A Clean Sound With A Guitar Amp
LearningWe have already seen how to set correctly the knobs of your instrument. But we still have to shape the signal before it comes out of the loudspeaker.
How To Adjust Guitar Knobs Correctly - What Are The Knobs On A Guitar For?
LearningSure, you can grab your guitar, crank up all the knobs and play. But if all those controls are there, they must serve a purpose!
How To Adapt To A Specific Vocal Range - Transpose A Guitar According To The Vocal Range
LearningA guitarist must frequently adapt to the voice of the singer and specially to his or her own vocal range. How should this be done?
Choosing the Right Electric Guitar String Set - Which electric guitar string set should you buy?
LearningFor many years, when we were forced to leave our comfortable home to buy strings, we trusted our favorite salesman to recommend us an adequate set. Thanks to the Internet, there is no need to waste s…
The Top Alternative Tunings For Guitar - The Best Open Tunings for Guitar
LearningBesides the standard E-A-D-G-B-E, there are lots of other alternative tunings that allow us to explore new sound horizons with our guitar. Let's review the main open tunings.
The Best Electric Guitar Manufacturers - The Top Electric Guitar Makers
LearningHere are the top electric guitar manufacturers according to the survey we carried a few days ago in our forums.
The Top Guitar Amp Brands - The Best Guitar Amp Brands
LearningAside from the guitar (and the guitarist!), the amp is certainly the most decisive factor in a guitarist's sound
How To Get a Fat Guitar Sound - Guitar Doubling Basics
LearningWhen people refer to a sound as being "fat" they usually mean different realities and consequently different practices. Here is an overview of the techniques most commonly used to easily get a fat so…
What is Reamping? - Reamping: How Does It Work?
LearningIf you're a guitar player and have started to think about recording your instrument, you may have heard about reamping. But what is that exactly?
How to Record an Electric Guitar - Recording Your Electric Guitar
LearningYou have an electric guitar, you have learned how to play it, you have written a wonderful song, and now you just have to record it. But how?
How to record an acoustic guitar - Mic placement for acoustic guitar recording
LearningWithout pretending to publish the definitive guide to guitar recording, here are a few tips on how to record an acoustic guitar with an electrostatic microphone.
Amplifiers: what are classes A/B/AB/D - Explanation of class A, class B, class AB and class D amps
LearningThe basic function of an amplifier is to increase a low intensity signal capture. It can be a direct source such as a microphone, a musical instrument, or a signal corrected by an intermediary preamp…
How to avoid ground loops - Banish Ground Loop Hum
LearningThere are a few different reasons why a musician might wish to use multiple amplifiers as part of their rig.
Gain without pain: giving the guitar cabinets their own… - Isolating your speaker cabinets for the best guitar sound
LearningFor recording guitarists, one benefit of a head-and-stack configuration over a combo is that you can separate the amplifier from the speaker cabinet and run a long cable between the two.
How to Listen to and Care for Your Amp When It’s Sick - Diagnosing and Fixing a Tube Amp
LearningGuitar amps are, no matter how you cut it, black boxes. You may think you have control over them, but when it gets down to it, you can’t really see inside the black box, and even if you could, there …
Understanding Those Magic Boxes of Doom - Distortion… Clean and Simple
LearningSo the bad news is, it’s virtually impossible to tell what the distortion pedal sounds like without auditioning it personally.
Use digital delay to produce many more effects than jus… - The Many Uses for Digital Delay
LearningThe two most important effects in a guitarist’s signal chain are distortion and delay. And if you derive your tone strictly from the amp—whether it’s squeaky clean or buzzsaw nasty—then the digital d…
