How to set the intonation of a guitar or a bass (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about how to set the intonation of a guitar or bass with Tune o'Matic fixed bridge.

First off, before setting the intonation, we need to have the neck of our guitar straight and the action perfectly set, click here for a dedicated article.

Tune o' Matic is one of the most common types of fixed bridge that can be found on a guitar or a bass, and it comes in many variants, some with a tailpiece, and some without.
This type of bridge was created in the early '50s by Gibson guitars, and still today it is considered a standard, and it is produced by many manufacturers due to its stability and versatility in fine tuning the intonation.

What do we mean with "setting the intonation of a guitar?"
Guitars comes in different neck lenghts, different numbers of frets, and players can choose among different gauges of strings, and all these variables can affect the intonation, which means that even if we tune a string to be a certain note, sometimes if we play the same string at the 12th fret (which should be exactly the same note) the tuning up there may result off, and sometimes this variation gets even to the point of becoming a different note.
The Tune o'Matic bridge (and its clones) comes in our aid with its brilliant engineering: it's a serie of saddles (one for each string), which can be adjusted individually with a screw.

What is the purpose of using a screw on this saddles? 

To increase or decrease of some millimeter the distance between the nut and the bridge (technically the saddle, the part of the bridge that touches the string).

If the string is perfectly tuned, for example in E, and at the 12th fret the note is a bit too high, we can make the distance between the nut and the saddle a little longer, and this will lower the 12th fret pitch.
If it is still not enough, it's also possible to turn the orientation of the saddle backwards to gain some extra millimeter (if the saddle type allows this).

If instead the pitch at the 12th fret is too low compared to the tuning of the open string we can make the distance between the nut and the saddle a little shorter.

Keep in mind that this intonation cannot make miracles, so if the tuning is too low for the neck lenght it's almost impossible to make the pitch perfect, so we must sometimes settle with being close, but not nailing it completely.
A solution could be switching to a thicker string gauge, and if not even this is enough, maybe we should consider buying a guitar with a longer neck, like a baritone one.

Now, to have the the perfect guitar we need to move to the final step: to set the perfect pickup height! (click here for a dedicated article).


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Review: Toneforge Menace

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a very interesting plugin: a guitar amp simulator designed from one of the most productive rock-metal mix engineers in the scene: Joey Sturgis!

Menace is a guitar amp simulator particularly interesting, which is composed by a signal chain, in which the single elements are bypassable: Pedal (which is a Tube Screamer emulation), Amp, Cab, Magic (which is a post-processing created by the producer), Eq (an emulation of a mixer channel parametric eq to fine tune the tone), Limiter (an emulation of a peak limiter).

The Cab section contains the simulation of four microphones: Condenser, Sennheiser Md421, Shure Sm57 on and off axis), while the parametric equalizer splits the signal in five bands (lows, lower mids, mids, high mids and highs), letting us dial in our tone in a very precise way.

The Limiter module is not very common in an amp modeler, especially with this interface that looks like an emulation of a Teletronix La-2a Leveling Amplifier, since the trend lately is to compress the high gain guitar sound usually only in the low mid area, just to tame the dynamics of the palm muting. The result is that limiting the whole track has also a tone shaping effect, that makes the sound even more aggressive (obviously the risk of overdoing is always behind the corner though, so use it with caution). 

What makes this plugin different from the many other competitors both in the free and paid market?

Well, while the interface of this plugin is pretty common (a simple signal chain with built in overdrive, noise gate, amp and cab section), this "Menace" comes with a few goodies that the others don't have. 

First off the tone is right away very euphonic: the midrange is very musical, and the sound is pretty much mix ready without any tweaking.

The built in parametric equalizer does a good job in filtering out unwanted resonances, avoiding us to load an additional eq on the channel, and the peak limiter keeps the dynamics stable: basically this could be the only plugin you would need for your rhythm guitar insert (unless you need effects).

Interesting also the "Joey's Magic" funcion, which applies some eq and processing made by Joey Sturgis, and that helps the sound poking furthermore through the mix.

This plugin is said to be the first of many others, both for guitar and bass, that will help producers in having an usable, cpu lightweight tone right away, and as a first step from Toneforge  I must say they have pretty much nailed the purpose.

We'll be waiting for a good bass amp simulator and other expansions, keep up with the good work!

Specs taken from the website:

- Built in noise gate

- 5 bands parametric eq

- Built in leveling amplifier

- Cab simulator with 4 microphones modeled

- Fully automatable parameters (Vst3 version)

- Each module is bypassable

- Additional Joey Sturgis processing that can be enabled or disabled

- 32 bit and 64 bit, Vst2 and Vst3 version

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Review: Ignite Amps PTEq-X

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This time we're going to review an amazing free eq Vst plugin: Ignite Amps PTEq-X.
Ignite Amps is a company made by two italian engineers who both design free hi quality vst plugins and build physical hardware devices, such as guitar and bass preamps and stompboxes.

This time they created an equalizer based on the legendary Pultec EQP-1A (click here for an article about the story and the characteristics of this device), one of the most famous hardware equalized ever produced, still sold today after 65 years of carreer.
The plugin not only models the hardware device, but it extends its possibilities by letting us not only dial the low and high frequences, but also adding two extra "rack" units: one (based on the MEQ-5) dedicated to the mid frequences, with two bells set in different ranges, and another one with a high cut and a low cut filter (based on the HLF 3C), both of them with more frequences to choose from, compared to the original models.
Basically the controllable areas are now six, summing up the three modules, making this plugin flexible enough to satisfy most of the uses also in a modern studio.

The three modules are independently bypassable, and there is also a switch to choose between four types of tubes, made to add a different tone coloring,

Additional controls are an input and an output control, and a mono-stereo switch, that makes this plugin ideal both for mixing single mono tracks and for buss mixing and mastering.

The plugin is lightweight, stable and comes both in 32bit and 64bit version; a big thumbs-up for the Ignite guys, keep up with the good work and we hope to see more and more quality products in the future!


Specs taken from the Ignite Facebook page:

- Three different equalization modules with perfectly analog curve response even at highest frequencies
- Ignite Amps 3rd generation triode stage analog modeling for 4 different tube types
- Additional selectable frequencies for the PEQ1A model, compared to the original design
- Refined filters frequency precision for the MQ5 and H3C models, compared to the original design
- Switchable equalizers and tube stage modeling for better CPU usage management
- Switchable linear phase oversampling for aliasing reduction
- Global input / output level controls
- Mono / Stereo processing support
- Double precision (64 bit) floating point mathematical tube models
- Fully automatable controls
- Ignite Amps proprietary preset management system with bank file import/export functions

You can download the plugin for free by Clicking Here.


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Pultec and the other Parametric Equalizers: a guide with Free Vst Plugins

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will say something about the history of Equalization, in a way similar to the one we did for Compression.

An equalizer, as we have already seen, is a tool that allows us to boost or cut a certain frequency area. In the case of a Graphic equalizer you have the frequency range divided in "slices" and you can raise or lower the single band, and this system is used usually for the whole track.

A parametric equalizer instead lets you decide with one knob the frequency area to cut or boost, with another knob the amount of db to add or subtract, and with a last knob how narrow the cut or boost should be.

This kind of eq is used both for mixing the single tracks, and for mastering.

The story of equalization starts around 1920, and it was made mainly to process the voice of a radio host; equalizers were initially tube driven, then, the more mainstream they became, the more the analog version became popular, to the point that around 60s and 70s every mixing console had a separate analog parametric eq section for each track. 

Around the '90s the rack eq became back popular, and today we can choose among tube driven, analog and digital eq, in passive (so just made to filter out frequences) or active version.

All this different versions in the market are made to produce different results: a tube eq will give to the mix a certain amount of harmonic enhancement,  an analog eq will have a certain sonic property that can be heard in almost every record of the 70s (a very subtle saturation and a certain eq cut), while a digital eq has the undeniable advatage to let us sometimes see graphically (with a spectrum analizer).

The spectrum analizer has been a revolutionary tool: it lets you see the actual wave and to operate surgically in the specific frequences with great precision, letting you using not only your ears, but also your eyes.

Today we have Vst emulations of all kinds of hardware eq, and especially lately we are starting to see again the arrival in the market (both free and paid) of vintage parametric equalizers, with pieces of software that tries to recreate not only the way those processors used to work, but also the collateral properties, as the saturation, for example.

Usually  parametric equalizers have one gain knob that at unity position leaves the signal unaltered, and if you turn it up or down it adds or subtracts dbs in the assigned frequency area, but there is a very particular hardware processor, called Pultec EQP-1A that works differently (see picture above).

This equalizer, lauched originally in 1951, is one of the most used of all times in the music industry, and its latest incarnation is still on sale today.

The original Pultec is a tube eq which has the particularity to have for each one of the 2 bands, 2 gain knob: one for the amount of boost to apply and one for the amount of attenuation.
Said this way it sounds like those two knobs cancels out each other, but the truth is that the two knobs which works in the same frequency range doesn't actually affect exactly the same identical frequences: the attenuation in facts happens in a slighly higher area than the boost, and this makes possible to achieve an attenuation that has for example a boost in the area before the slope starts.
Is it also possible to control the Q, which is how narrow is the boost or cut.

Why to choose today a Vst that emulates an old piece of hardware with very limited controls like the Pultec instead of using a very flexible new Vst equalizer, with a lot of functions and a built in spectrum analizer?
Because often, if the programmers are good, it recreates the coloring that this device used to give to the tracks, and because it forces you also to use softer settings, which leads to less drastic and surgical changes in the sound, leaving a more natural result which is proper of the '60s and '70s records.
My suggestion is to give it a shot and decide with your ears.


Here's 2 versions, one free and one paid of the Pultec EQP-1A Vst emulations:

Ik Multimedia Vintage Equalizer (paid)

Ignite Amps PTE-Qx


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Interview: Joey Sturgis

Joey Sturgis is one of today's most recognized modern rock-metal-metalcore producers in the United States: his huge sounding drums and hyper polished productions made him earn an impressive credit both among producers an bands,  
He represents also a new generation of mix engineers (that will probably grow with the time), one that does not have the old hardware mixing board and hardware racks as reference for quality, but that prefer the flexibility of using only (or mainly) plugins AS A CHOICE, instead of an economic need.
Joey is not only a good mix engineer, he also produces a serie of plugins for mixing, speaker impulses, drum samples, and he even has an online mixing course (along with other collaborators) called Nail the mix, on which he explains his techniques.
Here's our interview:

GuitarNerdingBlog: Hello Joey and welcome to Guitar Nerding Blog! Tell us your story: How did you become a mix engineer?

JoeySturgis: Hey guys! Thanks for having me here. I started producing, recording, and mixing out of necessity. I come from a musical family and around the age of 18, I was playing drums in a metal band. We needed a demo to post on MySpace, and so after finding out one of my friends had a cool make shift recording situation in his garage, I decided to learn how to do it on my own. He gave me a key and let me come in late at night to play around. I just started messing with stuff and experimenting. After a while, I got good enough to record my own band's demo and put it up on MySpace. We got a lot of interest from that demo, and before too long, I was recording other bands on the weekends because they were dying to work with me. That grew into a web of contacts and soon enough I was very busy. A record label owner (Craig Ericson) took interest of my abilities after I had done a few key projects that he was signing and soon after became my manager. The rest is history!

GNB: Which are your career highlights? Which are the artists that influenced you the most? Is there still some collaboration that you would like to do?

JST: I have a lot of career highlights, but I think a big moment that stands out is getting an RIAA certified gold record for the single "The Final Episode" from Stand Up and Scream with band Asking Alexandria. Unrelated to that achievement, I am mostly influenced by guys like Chris Lord Alge and Randy Staubb. I think the most interesting collaboration would be me and the band "Between The Buried And Me".

GNB: What do you think about today's music business? What are your thoughts about underground and mainstream music scene of nowadays?

JST: Today's music business is a very diverse landscape of informal and formal backgrounds ranging from experienced to "I have no clue what I'm doing". Because of this, the expectation for professionalism is a little low in the music industry in general, and I've found a lot of clients rarely understand how the business works at all. This makes it hard to navigate projects and negotiate working terms for producers. I think underground music is very interesting because I believe very firmly in a generation of creators who are growing up with YouTube in their life, and social media as a strong self-promotion platform. I think we'll see more and more DIYers in the Mainstream music scene soon.

GNB: What do you think about the digital music distribution? What about the file sharing? How do you think the music business will evolve in the future?

JST: Digital Music Distribution is an amazing concept that the music industry failed to capitalize on when it first came into play. If the Music Industry would have come up with something sorta like a cross between Spotify, YouTube Red, and Apple Music services combined, with a cap on listen count, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. Unfortunately, we're in an unfixable mess unless streaming services cap listen counts. Until then, no one will agree on what a listen is worth. I think the future of selling music is to just make it free and make everything else cost more, or making all music ONLY stream-able and cap the number of listens per month and then tier the pricing.

GNB: Since many readers of our blog are mainly interested in the technical side of the music world, can you tell us something about your studio equipment? Can you tell us something about the last recordings you've done?

JST: I am mostly ITB meaning "in the box". I never have been a OTB "out the box" engineer. I just capture as raw as possible into the computer and then use plugins to modify the sound. I mix as I go because I also produce 99% of the projects I work on, so I know everything that's going on from inception to final product. That means I can get away with recording things a certain way knowing how I'll mix it later. A lot of people don't have that luxury. In fact, there's been a few times in the past where I've had to send stuff off to other people and they call back scratching their heads because I can't assume they'll understand my crazy mess hah. That said, here's the gear:
RME FireFace 800 Interface
Presonus Central Station
ADAM A7Xs
AT4040 Microphone
CountryMan DI
Tons of plugins

Sorry it's not more glamorous, but this is all you need to make albums like I do. Oh and you'll need a local studio to go record drums in.

GNB: Tell us something about you recording studio (The Foundation Recording Studio): which Daw do you use? What are your favorite vst plugins? Do you use hardware outboards or you prefer to mix in the box?

JST: The Foundation Recording Estate has been in Michigan for a number of years now, we are exclusively Cubase 6.5. All of my engineers use this, and all of my records have been created on a version of Cubase throughout the years. My favorite plugins are actually the ones I design myself (Joey Sturgis Tones) and the Waves stuff. I don't have any outboard hardware, it's too limiting for my work flow. I prefer to be able to change stuff on the fly.

GNB: What is your opinion about the world of amp/cabinet simulators nowadays? Do you think eventually they will replace entirely the classic hardware or will there be always an "uncanny valley" between the simulation and the real thing? Does this apply to hardware processors like compressors etc?

JST: Amp and Cab simulators have come a long way, and I would know because I design my own with my company Joey Sturgis Tones. You can check out our simulator line known as Toneforge. There's no way to completely replace hardware, because in the computer, everything is either a recreation or a virtual simulation. The virtual simulation will always get better with time, but never meet up with the exact replica of the hardware. This is because simulating infinite variability in a circuit design is never going to be 100% possible. However, it might be possible to reach a point where human hearing can't distinguish the difference. It is entirely possible to recreate anything that is linear, but as you mention compressors and other non-linear processors, it will never be completely possible to replace them. However, we can get close enough now to fool almost anyone, including audiophiles.

GNB: Let's talk about guitar tone: what is your favourite way to get a good guitar tone? Do you use vst amp simulators or you still prefer to mic a cabinet? Have you got any tip to share?

JST: I typically use my own amp simulators or work on my own designs for amp simulators to get the virtual guitar tones I'm after. It takes weeks and sometimes months of tweaking to get all of the adjustments right. It's a series of saturators and filters to get the amp sound up to snuff, and then more filtering and EQing after that. I haven't really mic'd up a cab in AGES. It's probably been 8 years now. Impulses and virtual amp / cab simulators can get you really far. I have many accomplishments to show for it! The biggest tip I can give anyone is that EQ matters the most, next to a GREAT performance.

GNB: Do you have any advice for the guys that wish to open a recording studio on their own, or to become mixing or mastering engineers?

JST: You gotta be willing to sacrifice a lot to go far. The playing field is no longer level, there are people who are enrolled in services like Nail The Mix who are getting a leg up on everyone else and taking over the workload. If you want to succeed today, you gotta be enrolled in something that's actively dishing out new knowledge like that, or you're going to fall behind to all the most updated trends and techniques.

GNB: Tell us something about your JST line of plugins: how is the creation project behind them?

JST: Joey Sturgis Tones is my plugin company, we strive to create audio products that unlock the creativity and full potential of musically gifted people. Our mission is to just make it easier for people to make great music. Essentially I have around 300+ plugin ideas written down, so we just try to tackle them all, one at a time. Each plugin takes about 6 months to a year to fully realize, but we're working hard to speed up the time it takes from idea to completed product. It's hard because sometimes ideas are great, but when you get them as prototypes in your hands, you realize they could be better. And that's where the feature creep begins to happen and the longer it takes to reach a final concept.

GNB: Do you have any tip or suggestion on how to use your plugins? Or some setting you prefer?

JST: My plugins are created to be tools, so settings aren't necessary. You don't need settings for a phillips head screwdriver, right? Or a hammer. So yeah, it's just a tool that you use to get great sounds. It's meant to accelerate your ability to create great music, and designed to spark your creativity.

GNB: Thank you for the interview, tell us something about your future projects!

JST: In the future, I will be working hard to improve everyone's understanding of audio and production. There's a lot of bad information out there, so my goal is to educate everyone better on the topic of audio!

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Review: JST Finality

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're reviewing a vst from JST (Joey Sturgis Tones), a line of plugins created by the producer Joey Sturgis, one of the most known modern rock/metal producers in America.

This plugin, Finality, is a Peak Limiter (click here for an in depht article about mixing and mastering with peak limiters), which is basically a compressor modeled after the way they used to make them in the 60s and 70s: with a threshold knob to decide from where to start compressing, an output knob to even out the output with the dry track, and a VU meter to check out the amount of gain reduction going on.

Finality comes in 2 versions: Lite and Advanced.
The Lite version is a streamlined version, more similar to the hardware machines it emulates, that has basically four knobs: threshold, output, input and mix (this one lets you choose the amount of processed signal to be mixed with the dry one).

The Advanced version instead is a much more complete plugin, which takes the lite version and adds many more controls.

Let's take a look at them:
- Hard and soft mode: it changes the way transients are mantained: with soft mode they are preserved more.
- Aggro: it alters the release envelope (obviously there is a release knob too), and it's particularly useful with drums
- Colour: it's a switch that adds some saturation to the signal, to give more life to some weak recording take
- Lookahead: it helps anticipating peaks and attenuating them properly
- Autogain: a switch that sets automatically the makeup gain
- Sidechain: a switch and a knob made to handle sidechain with low end material

When testing this plugin I have been amazed by the sound quality: there are many competitors (some free and some paid) in the peak reduction realm, but this one is particularly good; I have use it on a drum overhead buss in order to tame the snare sound, give more body to the snare and raise the cymbals level, but I have also tried it on a vocals and on a bass track, and it adds a very warm and pleasant saturation.
The plugin can also be driven to pretty extreme settings without generating noise or other problems.
This plugin works very well on single tracks as well as on a mix buss, or as a broadband mastering compressor (although this last one isn't probably its originary purpose).

So far Joey Sturgis has impressed us with his array of plugins, one for each kind (so you don't lose yourself into an ocean of almost identical compressors and equalizers, unlike other producers tend to do), all very effective; a plugin that we'd suggest him to create in the future would be a nice channel strip: a nice parametric eq, gate and compressor (maybe a simple harmonic exciter knob too) all into a very simple interface and with some unique features like the ones that sometimes he adds on his plugins, specific for heavy music: it would be really interesting.

For now, thumbs up!


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Mixing and Mastering with a Peak Limiter (with Free Vst Plugins)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are talking about a very interesting tool to compress or limit a sound (under this point of view this article goes under the main category of COMPRESSORS) slighly different from the compressors and limiters interface of today.

In the old times (we are talking of the '60s), gain reduction was not a trend as today: sounds were much less "in your face", recordings were less loud and there was a lot of headroom and dynamic range (on the other hand songs were much less powerful and many nuances were hard to hear because they were really low in volume).

In the early '60s a producer called Teletronix created one of the most famous compressors of the time, the LA-2A Leveling Amplifier, a tube-driven peak limiter which still today is used by some classic studio due to its simplicity and the very particular harmonic enhancement produced.

In 1968, then, a producer called Urei created a peak limiter that still today is considered by many studios a standard, and it is still in production: the 1176Ln Peak Limiter, one of the first compressors / peak limiters (at the time the concept of compressor and limiter was really the same) to be completely solid state, unlike the other models which all were tube-driven.

In the modern times Compressors and Limiters have taken different roads, specializing in different tasks and different phases of the music production, but the origin of both is the Peak Limiter, a tool that originally had just two knobs: Peak Reduction and Gain (or Input and Output).

Peak reduction controls the amount of compression to apply to the signal (as can be seen also from the VU meter), Gain controls the output volume. That's it.

Obviously with the following releases of the 1176, the unit started having more and more controls, to the point that today is very similar to a modern compressor: you can choose the compression ratio among four modes (or press all the buttons together to drive the ratio to the max), you can decide attack and release with two knobs and there are different ways of using the VU Meter. 

HOW TO USE TODAY A PEAK LIMITER:

Mixing:  There are many uses of a compressor (both physical or one of the countless VST versions, such as the freeware Modern Lost Angel or Modern Seventh Sign by Antress, or the Variety of Sound Thrillseeker, or Nomad Factory Bus Driver), but today this kind of units are used mainly for Buss Compression.

A typical use of a Peak Limiter is on the Drum Overhead Buss: usually the snare is the loudest drum part picked up by the oh microphones, therefore putting a peak limiter in the OH buss lets us compress the snare sound and raise and make stable the level of the cymbals: this way the cymbals will be more audible and with less dynamic range, and at the same time the snare will pop out less but it will gain in weight and sustain.
The only thing to remember is to balance the output of the signal, because since we are adding db of gain IN, we should lower accordingly of the same amount of db the OUTPUT in order to leave the overall level of the track unaltered, just processed.

A peak limiter is also good on single tracks such as Bass or Vocals, adding weight and loudness, if we want to use compression as a tone shaping tool, since this obviously is not the most transparent way of processing our track. 

One last great way to use a peak limiter is for parallel compression: this way we can really squeeze a buss with all the drum parts, and then mix this sound back into the unprocessed sound, until we find the desired mix between the two.

Mastering: There are some mastering engineers who prefers the subtlety of a multiband compressor in the mastering buss, in order to be able to tame selectively certain frequences and to make adjustments even in the mastering phase, and some other engineers who prefer to have all the mix equilibrium perfect, and then slam the track with a broadband compressor, leveling equally all frequences (I often prefer this solution, and if there is some frequency that needs to be tamed, I prefer going back to the mixing project and solve the problem from there). With the hardware version obviously the hardware needs to be stereo, otherwise two units are needed, anyway this kind of peak limiter is very good in mastering, because often the harmonic excitement and the warmth that it adds to the song is just what it takes to bring a recording to the next level.

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