What to do with a Muddy Guitar

A muddy guitar that hides the instrument’s true tone is not what you want. Using a high-pass filter to get rid of unwanted low frequencies that make the guitar sound muddy is essential to your EQ. Adjusting the filter more than usual can greatly improve the guitar’s presence and fit with the full band. This gives you a cleaner and clearer sound.

Key Points:
  • A muddy guitar only gets worse when matched with the full band. Low frequencies from various instruments overlap and cause clutter in the mix.
  • The first step to fixing that muddy guitar is to use a high-pass filter. It removes low-end frequencies not essential to the guitar’s character.
  • Just setting the high-pass filter to a standard position (e.g. 80 Hz) may not be enough. You may need to be bold in filtering higher frequencies to get your desired clarity.
  • Cutting more of the low-mid frequencies can make the guitar stand out in the mix.
  • Adjustments that might feel like the guitar sounds thin on it’s own can actually improve its fit in the mix when paired with the full band.

Topics

Mixing

Categories

Audio
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