THE EFFECTS LOOP: what it is and how to use it

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about an important aspect of every amplifier and mixer: the FX LOOP!
What is it?
The effects loop, talking practically, it's a part of a sound's Signal Chain (Click here for a dedicated article!), set between the preamplifier and the power amp (therefore, AFTER the Gain Related Area), and its relevance has been increasing through the years with the increasing of the amount of gain required from the players: if we set a Delay BEFORE the Gain Related Area, the repetitions will be distorted as well, often with chaotic results if the gain is high.
To make sure the effect is clean, the only solution is to set it after the gain area, and that's what the Fx Loop is for: we're going to take the signal of our preamplifier (and therefore of any stompbox set in the input of the amp) from the SEND out and we're gonna send it to the IN of our effect (for example, a modulation unit), then we will go from the OUT of our effect to the power amp via the RETURN of our amplifier.

There are two types of Loop Connections: Serial and Parallel.

- Serial: This is the simpliest connection, and it's the aforementioned one: Guitar -> Preamp -> effect -> Power Amp.
The upsides of this connection are the simplicity and the compatibility with any effect, the downside is that usually, except for the most expensive amplifiers, the signal with effects in the loop gets slighly degraded.

- Parallel: in this case we could say that the signal is split in two: part of the signal will be effected (Wet) and part will not (Dry). Most of the times, in amplifiers that features a parallel loop will even be possible to choose between Serial and Parallel; to know if our amplifier features a serial or parallel loop we just need to connect a jack cable in the send out: if our amp becomes mute, the loop is Serial.
The upsides of this connection are the fact that the Dry signal is not degraded, since it doesn't pass from the loop, the downside is that we will have less flexibility, and that if we use a digital
effect we're gonna set the signal to 100% Wet, because due to the AD-DA conversion, the processed signal could be slighly delayed, generating unpleasant results when used together with the Dry one.
Finally, since Parallel loop effects only one part of the signal, if we use a Booster, or an Equalizer or a Tremolo, they won't affect the Dry sound, and will lose most of their effectiveness.


Some digital floorboards (such as the Pod Hd or the latest Digitech ones) also lets the user to connect them with a Four Cable Mode, in order to separate correctly the effects that needs to go in the Input of the amp from the ones that must go in the Loop, and to connect them to the correct plugs while still using the preamp of the amplifier, without replacing it with the digital one (if we wanted to use just the preamp of the floorboard the connection would have been much easier: Guitar -> Floorboard -> Return of the amp).

Finally, there is an Effect Loop in the mixer too, in order to connect an external hardware or software unit and to place the effect after the Channel Preamps. The Dry-to-Wet ratio is controlled by the FX control present in the channel. This feature is present in the DAW mixers too, and the process of loading an effect and sending it to the various tracks in different amounts is explained in the article dedicated to the FX TRACKS.


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EAR TRAINING PART 2: LOCATE THE SINGLE INSTRUMENTS ON A MIX.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 OF THIS TUTORIAL

Hello and welcome to this week's tutorial! This time we will discuss about a very interesting topic: 

How to "deconstruct" the mix of our favourite song, so that we will have a clear reference on how to build ours from the ground up, trying to replicate as much as possible the solutions used.

We have already seen a way of "copying" the eq of a song or a single instrument into ours (click here for the article about copying eq), but this time is different: we won't try to copy the eq, since often the same setting of one mix or one single instrument applied to a different one will result into an unnatural, twisted sound, instead we will just locate and take notice of the zones reserved to the single instruments, and try to build our mix in a similar way, or at least we will learn some trick used by the producers :)

The ideal would be to have a song in which there is a moment where you can hear the instrument playing alone, but this isn't absolutely essential: part of our ear training is to learn to isolate the single instruments from a mix, and to focus just on it until the other sounds "disappear".

A frequency analizer is very useful for many things (click here for a dedicated article), but it can't help us isolating the region of a single instrument inside a mix, so it' usable only if the instrument is playing alone.

There are many ways to find the right frequencies with the aid of our ear, here are the two most common: 

- using an Equalizer: apply a high pass filter on the mix, starting to roll off the lows until we find that the instrument we need to isolate starts to lose energy, and back off a little bit, then we do the same with a low pass filter; we may find for example that the rhythm guitar of the song we love is placed exactly from 100hz to 8500hz.

Some high end equalizer (such as the Fabfilter one) also lets us isolate a single area in real time, letting us listen only the selected part of the spectrum.

- using a Multiband Compressor: this processor divides the wave in different bands (usually four, click here for a dedicated article), so what we're going to do is to listen the single bands in solo (often multiband compressors have this feature) until we find the one with the instrument we are looking for, then we adjust the starting and ending point of the band with the same method explained for the high pass and low pass filters. 

Once we have written down all the areas of the mix roughly reserved to the single instruments, we can analize them and surely learn something: how much room is reserved for rhythm guitars? Where is located the snare? How deep the bass goes? how much room is taken from the vocals?

Here is an interesting article about mixing with a referencing track!

When will be time for us to mix our song, if the source tone and style we obtained is not completely different from the one of our reference mix, we can try to place the various instruments in a similar way (but let's not be too rigid, if the sound isn't completely identical, it's pointless to use the exact numbers of the reference mix, our aim is to understand the area), and then we can move on to the following phase: to "poke holes" in the eq of the instruments, in order to let the other sounds to cut better through them, if there is some frequency masking (click here to learn more).

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 OF THIS TUTORIAL

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GUITAR AND BASS NUT! materials and characteristics.

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about a topic usually overlooked by most of the players, but since we are GUITAR NERDS we're going to analize it, and maybe we will also tweak our instrument accordingly: I'm talking about the GUITAR and BASS NUT!

The nut is a small strip of material, usually plastic or bone, placed at the joint where the headstock meets the fretboard.

"Its grooves guide the strings onto the fretboard, giving consistent lateral string placement. It is one of the endpoints of the strings' vibrating length. It must be accurately cut, or it can contribute to tuning problems due to string slippage or string buzz. To reduce string friction in the nut, which can adversely affect tuning stability, some guitarists fit a roller nut. Some instruments use a zero fret just in front of the nut. In this case the nut is used only for lateral alignment of the strings, the string height and length being dictated by the zero fret." (Wikipedia).

The nut marks one end of the vibrating length of each open string, sets the spacing of the strings across the neck and usually holds them at the proper height from the fingerboard; this small but essential piece has been produced with any kind of material, but today the most characteristic materials are essentially four: Plastic, Bone, Graphite and Metal.

- Plastic: it's the cheapest material, but today it represents also a very technological replacement to bone: new materials like Tusq features almost no difference from a real bone nut (plus, no animal killing is involved :D).

- Bone / Ivory: bone is considered one of the best materials to be used for nut construction, as it features volume, a wide open tone, strength against mechanical shocks and offers a fine tuning reliability. Best results are achieved with periodic lubrication.

- Graphite: the use of graphite is very common in case of a Tremolo-equipped guitar; the result is a good compromise between tone and performance. Today is also available a similar material: Graphtech, which is graphite mixed to teflon, and it assures an even better lubrication and tuning stability.

- Metal: in this category we may find many kinds of nuts, but the most characteristic type is the Steel one, with rollers to ease the strings slide. Steel is a fine material for nut if we're not after the classic "vintage" tone, or we need for more brightness on our sound.


The material a nut is made of influences the tone of an instrument on the open strings, and on the difference between them and the fretted strings; the ideal would be to have the open strings to sound as similar as the fretted ones as possible;
The best way to achieve this result is by using a so-called "zero fret", which is basically a fret installed right after the nut, sometimes equipped with a strings guide itself, which holds the strings in the correct position. By using a metal nut, a "zero fret" is usually not required.
A way to lube the string guides it's just to use a needle, with a little bit of lipstick (like the lip protecting ones with cocoa butter), and to put a small quantity of the lipstick directly on the slide.

Finally, speaking of Tremolo-equipped guitars, we must not forget the locking nut: this kind of nut, usually used in conjunction with a Floyd Rose system, clamps the string before the node point. This system greatly improves tuning stability when using the vibrato bar, however a drawback is that the locking nut must be loosened using an Allen wrench, to tune strings outside the range of the fine tuners on the bridge.

Click here for a dedicated article about Locking Tuners!


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FUZZ! (with Free Vst plugins inside!!)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Fuzz!

With "Fuzz" we refer to a type of distortion used mainly in the '60s and '70s to add more drive to an amplifier, increasing the input level and cutting mid frequencies, bringing the original sinusoidal wave to a square wave.

This effect was used in many ways, but at the beginning the aim was just to saturate the sound, as can be heard on many Jimi Hendrix (with his famous Arbiter Fuzz Face) or Keith Richards guitar parts (like in the legendary "Satisfaction" riff). 

The first Fuzz box, the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Tone, made its American debut in 1962; it was created in an attempt to have the guitar imitate brass and string instruments, but it's been the Rolling Stones, few years later, to make it famous.

In the seventies the Fuzz (especially the Electro Harmonics Big Muff) has been used not only to distort the sound but also, lowering the settings, to obtain a long sustain, keeping che sound with a low saturation, and this is the use made by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. 

The effect has been used also to saturate and add bite to the Bass sound, and it's still used today, especially by extreme metal bands, and vintage sounding projects.

Today the effect is used mainly by bands that look for some vintage shade on their sound palette, especially of the Indie-Alternative genre, and it is also used to distort vocals, drums and synths in creative ways; 

our suggestion is to try some of these free Vst and to get creative!!

Here are the best free Vst Fuzz simulators available!

- Fuff Muzz: an interesting Big Muff Emulator.

- Face Bender: A nice Fuzz Face Emulator

- Fuzz Plus 2: An interesting, vintage sounding Fuzz

- Fuzz Stone 2: a stompbox style Fuzz with cabinet simulation

- Dirty Fuzz Distortion: "the classic Fuzz sound with the addition more dirt"

- Octave Dirty Fuzz: a simulator of the Octavia Fuzz, Octave+fuzz

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GUITAR SPEAKERS! Everything you need to know

“the secret to great sound is to understand where it starts for the listener and work your way backwards.”

(Ray Thomas Baker, Queen producer)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about guitar amp speakers!

Speakers are a very important part of a guitar (and bass) tone, and like every other item in the Signal Chain they colour the tone by altering the EQ, harmonics, and sound envelope of anything is in front of them.
Speakers can be an excellent way of solving tonal problems that many spend thousands of dollars trying to fix: we like the tone of our amplifier but we need a bit more body in the low-end area (possibly because we have a bright sounding guitar)?
We can try changing the speaker: there are more modern sounding, more vintage sounding, with more or less low-end, more suited for overdrive or for clean tones (in the manufacturer's website there are often comparison charts with the brand's speaker models, in order to understand the differencies of Eq and timbre among them).

This article does not intend to go too deep with the physics that rules a speaker, but there are a couple of important parameters to bear in mind when choosing the right one: Ohms and Watts.

- Ohms (often represented with the greek letter for Omega "Ω") it's the measuring system for Impedance, which is basically the resistance applied between the Output transformer of the amp and the speaker. Ideally, the lower the impedance is, the louder the sound will result, but the more stressful the task will be for the amplifier (although most of modern amplifiers are perfectly suited to work even with 4 Ohm).

Guitar cabinets are usually built with the following impedance values: 4 Ohm, 8 Ohm or 16 Ohm and some of them lets us switch betweek the values, while others instead can only work in one or two modes. 

The ideal situation would be to connect the speaker cable (which is not a common instrument cable, don't mistake!!) from the amplifier's output to the cabinet input of the matching Ohm impedance, but this is not always possible.

If we must use a non matched amp-speaker combination, it is possible to use the cabinet with higher impedance value with the amp using a lower setting (e.g. 8 Ohm cabinet with 4 Ohm amp setting).

This type of connection will slighly modify the overall instrument timbre due to the fact that the output transformers will have to deal with different load (this is true for tube power amp section, not the solid state one), but it won't cost any harm to the amplifier.

A combination to avoid, instead, is when we have a lower impedance value cabinet connected to the higher impedance value amp. For example: 4 Ohm cabinet connected to the 8 Ohm amp; this will stress the output transformer and may cause damage to the amplifier.

- Speaking of Watts, instead, it's important to check out the maximum load accepted from a cabinet (intended as the sum of the single speakers mounted): it must be equal or if possible higher than the maximum Rms output of the amplifier, in order to avoid damages to the speaker.

For example: if we have a 120w rms head, we must connect it to AT LEAST a cabinet with 1 120w speaker, or 2x60w speakers, but if possible it would be even better to connect it to a 4x60w speakers, so that the power load is divided by four (120w / 4 = 30w), and sent to 4 speakers with a 60w maximum power rating, so that we are sure that even if we drive the amp to the maximum, the speakers won't get damaged.

Today there are many speaker manufacturers, which builds loudspeakers of any kind, any dimension (the most common for guitars is usually 12 inches, but for bass is also popular the 10" or the 15" size) and any material (the most commons are Ceramic and Alnico), and the most popular brands are Celestion, Electro-Voice, Eminence and Jensen. Each brand and each single model has a unique sound, and as always our suggestion is to go to a shop with your own guitar (and if possible, amplifier), and to try as many speaker-cabinet combinations as you can, in order to choose the cabinet more suited to your own taste.

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The Loudness War: The TT Dynamic Range Meter (Free Vst Download Inside)

Hello everybody and welcome to this week's article! 

Today we're going to talk about the Loudness War! What is it?

In the last decades, music productions have become louder and louder, why? 

Because if the artist "A" wants to be heard in the radio louder than the artist "B", he will want a louder mastering. 

Then artist "B" will want an ever louder mix to be heard even "better" than artist "A", and this mentality ignited a "war" (or a downward spiral): every artist wants to sound louder than the others, so in the last decades we have witnessed to a general increase of the average loudness in music.

Is there any downside of this war? Yes. more than one: As we have seen on our article about Limiters (Click Here for a dedicated article about Limiters), the ceiling is always the same: -0.1db, so the only thing that can be used to push a mix is the the threshold; the more we lower it, the less headroom the mix will have, the more we will lose transient, and in the end the result will be (and it often is) a distorted, lo-fi mess, as can be heard on Metallica's "Death Magnetic" album,  which is often taken as an example of excessively loud mastering.

During the last few years a group of mastering engineers have created the Pleasurize Music Foundation, a foundation with the aim of explaining to the people, and expecially the producers, how an excessively loud mastering can ruin a song and result unpleasant and ear-fatiguing.

This foundation (which also sometimes promotes a "Dinamic Range Day" in which people on social networks tries to sensibilize the others about this problem that is said to be ruining modern music) has also created a tool, called the TT Dynamic Range Meter, which is a free standalone program, and a Vst Metering Tool (click here for a dedicated article about metering tools).

This tool should be put on the last slot (which usually is the post-fader one) of the Master Channel of our Daw, during the Mastering Phase (click here for a dedicated article about the mastering phase), in order to check out the final levels of our song: the particularity of the tool is that it not only it tells us about the volume of the song, but also about the headroom. If the central strip is too short and red, it means that our mix and/or master is over compressed, and this will lead to listening fatigue. When the meter is in the yellow area it means it's acceptable, while if it's green it means that there is a lot of headroom, and the final result will be pleasant and with all the transients perfectly audible (Click Here for a dedicated article about transients).

In conclusion, my suggestion is to check out the Pleasurize Music Foundation, to dowload their metering tool from that page and to master your song according to this tool's judgement: it will really improve the quality and enjoyability of your music.

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GUITAR AND BASS STRINGS! a guide for dummies.

hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about the part of our instrument that is directly touched by our fingers and our pick: the strings.

In order to decide which string to use, besides the particular characteristics of the various manufacturers, there are three general aspects that we need to understand: the Winding, the Material and the Gauges.

- The Winding: the two main string winding types for guitar and bass are the Flatwound type and the Roundwound type. 

All wound strings are made by wrapping layers of wire around a core wire. Roundwound strings use a round wire as the wrap, flatwound strings use a flat ribbon wire.
Roundwound strings deliver a brighter tone, but can also emphasize squeaks.
Flatwound strings have a duller sound, with less extra noise, and tend to keep a more consistent tone longer.

- The Material used to wrap the strings is also a crucial aspect, here are the three most used for electric guitar and bass:

Pure Nickel Wound String: Most strings of the '50, '60 and '70s were wound with an alloy called Pure Nickel; this kind of strings have a soft feel and produce that warm, vintage tone.

Nickel plated steel (commonly known as NPS) is the alloy most widely used in string making today. It is a steel winding with a nickel plating applied, which enhances the feel and reduces finger noise and fret wear. NPS strings are hotter and provide greater sustain and a brighter sound than the pure nickel ones.

Stainless steel strings are the hottest and brightest, and provide more sustain than either pure nickel or NPS. They are more resistant to oils, acids and sweat and are, hands down, the longest lasting strings. Used on most Flat-Wound sets, Stainless steel is a hard material, so it feels a little different and can cause more fret wear.

- String Gauge is the last general criteria we should use when choosing which strings to use on our beloved guitar or bass; the measure is in thousandths of an inch: the first number is the gauge of the thinnest string, the second number is the gauge of the thickest one, and the bigger a gauge is, the fatter and "mid-lows oriented" the tone will be, while smaller gauges will produce brighter tones. Most brands have string gauges that ranges from light to heavy, and also composited sets: for example if we are trying to obtain the typical Jimi Hendrix tone, we would use 10-38 pure nickel set, if we want to play death metal we can use instead a 13-56, or 13-60 stainless steel one, but we can also use composited sets with the highest strings of a thinner gauge and the lower ones of a thicker set, in order to obtain fat rhythm tones while retaining a certain softness for bendings, and a common example for this kind of set would be the 10-52 one.

For Bass the range goes from 40-100 to 55-115 for a four strings one, but a fifth string can become as big as 145.

String Brands: After we have chosen the right material, the winding type and the right gauge compromise that will let us play confortably our guitar and obtain the right tone, it's time to choose a good string brand. There are many brands on the market, and among them the most commons are: D'Addario, Ernie Ball, Elixir, Fender, Dean Markley, Rotosound, Ghs... The only criteria here is to try different brands and to choose with our own ear and fingers, until we find the right strings for us; in the end is all quite subjective.

Once we have our brand new strings it's time to mount them on our guitar or bass (click here for a dedicated article!).

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