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…
Of Polepieces and Magnetic Fields - How to Adjust Your Guitar Pickups for Best Sound
LearningIt occurred to me that for all the tweaking guitarists do with their tone — rolling tone controls up and down on both their guitars and amps — very few ever touch the pickups. Most guitarists I know …
12 Electric Guitars Tried and Tested - How Does it Sound? Electric Guitars
LearningAbout a year ago, we had you listen to 27 acoustic guitars and sent you on a trip through a 6-string jungle so you can pick your favorite guitar. AudioFanzine now repeats this experience, but this ti…
The ten that can make a big difference to your sound - The Top 10 Effects Pedal Targets
LearningA lot of guitar multieffects have a footpedal that can be assigned to various parameters. Volume and wa are no-brainer pedal assignments, but there are a whole lot of other parameters that are well-s…
Multi-Channel Micing for Live Sound - Capturing Guitar Amps in the Wild
LearningThere are almost as many ways to capture guitar amplifier sound with a microphone as there are for a piano. And as with piano (and kick and snare drum, for that matter) single-mic approaches can’t al…
How to Compress a Guitar or Bass - Dynamics Processing Meets Rock Guitar
LearningDynamics processing with studio-oriented processors? Been there, done that. But have you re-visited it lately in a guitar context? Dynamics control for vocals or program material is very different co…
The Next Big Thing in Guitar Distortion - A Guitarist's Guide to Multiband Distortion
LearningIf you're a guitarist and you're not into multiband distortion...well, you should be. Just as multiband compression delivers a smoother, more transparent form of dynamics control, multiband distortio…
27 Acoustic Guitars Tried and Tested - How Does it Sound? Acoustic Guitars
LearningWhenever you choose a guitar you might first fall in love with appearances, but also, and above all, you cherish its sound character. Six-string fans sometimes don't have the opportunity to listen to…
