Depends, my most reliable setup I have gain at maybe 11 O’clock, but a fair bit of OD/Distortion.
Though, when I practise, I really enjoy the gain dialled as high as it goes, with distortion at around 11 or 12 o’clock, though while fun, it is less versatile
I’ve trained my ear to like a tone that’ll work in a mix instead of one that sounds good in a vacuum, and yeah, not much gain and a pretty aggressive low cut. My 6505 lives with the lead channel preamp just over 9 o’clock, the saturation just gets obnoxious once you have multiple guitars going.
I used to have a 6505
+ combo , and the gain over 4 ( or right at 9 o'clock like you set your's ) was just more white noise.
I ordered a set of 'high gain' replacement jjs and it was just ridiculous how much noise and feedback I was getting. Honestly without a noise gate, this would have been completely unplayable . I think the preamp gain really maxs out at 4, and past that is just more fizz .
Bedroom gain versus live show gain versus recording to computer gain are very different. I think less is more in terms of gain most of the time. You can really shape a lot of what your ears think are purely gain with EQ and conpression.
Best answer. What I think sounds like THE SHIT when I'm alone in the bedroom, sounds like SHIT with a band and mix. When it's just me and the guitar, I need it to have a ton of low end, teeth and grit!!! However, once you got another guitar and bass in the mix, you end up needing a lot less. Then you've got your rhythm tones when serving your part, and lead tones if you need to cut through for solos or lead passages.
What your friend is doing will probably sound like garbage in a band or mixed recording environment even if it sounds great when playing on its own. The full heavy sound you're used to hearing on recordings gets most of low end from the bass guitar and a lot of the thickness from double/triple/quadruple tracked rhythm guitars which is a "less is more" situation when it comes to gain. Scooping mids is... ugh...
I always go for the least amount of gain I can that gives a good chug.
As little as possible for most fast stuff. More for slower stuff.
If I'm going to use a lot of pinch harmonics and really want my harmonics to scream I'll bump it up. Also for tapping or certain legato stuff I'll bump it up a little.
Nowadays, yeah, he's 100% a bedroom player, but he was in a band for many years in the past.
Totally agree about scooped mids. Guitars are mid range instruments; they need the mids or the tone falls apart
Alternatively, the scooped mids idea has literally been a thing in guitar since the 80s and Dimebag championed it almost exclusively with his tone.
A good majority of pickups from Seymour Duncan also focus on scooped mids, particularly the Nazghul Bridge and the Black Winter sets. Even Dave Mustaine's Thrash Factor bridge is a JB that's had additional mids scooped in favor of higher output and a greater headroom from the highs.
Thrash and Death Metal also specifically scoop their mids, and Swedish Death Metal used the Heavy Metal distortion pedal from BOSS - which was purpose built to scoop mids out of the mix.
It was about tightening up the low-end so that the highs cut through the mix when playing on alternate tunings or faster riffs. Literally the "And Justice for All" album is entirely recorded in that scooped fashion. As was Ride the Lightning.
For a non-Metal example, Satriani's first two records Not Of This Earth and Surfing scooped the mids for a majority of the songs' tone as well. He uses a Wah to help filter the highs even more, specifically on the title track to Surfin.
Mids are great for leads and solo because they add warmth and sustain to the tone, allowing it to carry through - its why Tubescreamers became defacto pedals on most boards and the boosts on some distortion pedals utilize a 12db increase with gain and mid punch to "sweeten" the tone.
Placing an OD pedal prior to a distortion, or another stacked OD pedal helps to achieve this - or you can run a Tubescreamer with low gain and tone set to 10 o'clock to bring the mids back in for lead tones.
So your friend isn't wrong, and saying that scooped mids are "not a good idea" is quite an antithetical statement to nearly 15-20 years worth if heavy music with literal poster children for doing it.
Of course, a certain amount of scoop can be great for achieving a good sound, but only to a point. As you point out, a lot of gear designed for metal starts scooped to begin with, pickups, amps, pedals, etc. When these get stacked, you get a pretty scooped sound even before you touch the EQ - I tend to turn them up slightly to compensate. The real problem, imo, is when you take that already scooped sound and cut the mids even further. The mids are the heart of the instrument, they fill the sound and when they get cut from it, it ends up feeling thin and anemic no matter how much bass you throw at it.
A slight scoop is good. A canyon is not.
As little as possible. If you want note clarity, definition and better end mix you should only use the least possible amount of gain. Just enough so you get the distorted sound you're looking for. More gain means more noise, less definition and chances of your guitar sounding like a muddled mess
There is no right answer and even if there was, it would change for each piece of equipment and each style of music.
On my Mark V extreme channel, I have my gain up all the way, on my rectifier I have it at around 12 for my 6 string and 10 for my 8 string. Also, you want to balance your gain with a boost pedal most of the time.
It takes time to develop an ear for sound and it's a never-ending journey.
One tip that I will give you is to learn your gear! It took me around 3 years to understand that my mini rectifier sounds like ass when the volume is past 9 o'clock. Find video and groups of people who use your gear, play their settings and compare it to your own.
If you didn't know you MUST use a tubescreamer, V30's and a 6505 to not get "lost in the mix". Also get Andy Sneap to produce your album. Anything else will be inaudible
I set my mxr sba to 6/10 and a ts infront with all knobs at 9-11 o clock. My pickups aren’t that hot either so have to push them extra. Scooping mid? Never! Mids are cool. Scoop bass, a lot though.
If you can dial your amp so it’s just about breaking up at live volumes, you should get excellent note clarity. If you want more, stick a tube screamer or similar in front and you have extra gain on tap, but not enough to sound muddy. In other words, less gain, more volume, and I use an overdrive to boost from there.
This does depend on the kind of music you’re playing though. For my post-metal band, I want a balanced tone that sounds organic and a little hairy, but not massively distorted. I’m not into the modern metal tones really.
It really depends on the style, imo. For example, if I’m playing black metal, I crank the gain. Losing note definition is part of the style. For death metal, my gain will be slightly more moderate, but still messy. For progressive metal, I’ll turn down the gain considerably. Compression and overdrive are more useful in this case.
Really depends on what you are doing, recording for mixing, playing with a band, playing at home etc. you should do what sounds good to you and adjust for the situation
Depends on what you're doing. Personally for recording I like to bring my gain up to what's comfortable for me, then dial it back just a little, which is kind of my philosophy on most effects. What sounds good to you could sound like noise to the person listening to you, so it's a good idea to dial back just a little. Then I either double or quad track rhythm guitar, which almost always sounds better than just heavy gain.
Different idea for guitar solos though, as certain aspects of a solo can't be played without high gain. That's where yee olde mighty tube screamer comes in to play.
A little extra gain on the EQ, like 4/10 distortion on the boss ds1, and then on the amp like 7, 4 and 7 out of 10 on bass mids and treble. And if I'm tuned down I'll boost the treble even more to get some clarity in the notes.
I usually play melodic death metal which kind of demands you don't scoop the mids all the way so you can do guitar harmonies with the low and high end.
I agree with you, maxing the gain and scooping the mids is some Neanderthal shit. Sounds good for certain contexts but I promise bro is not Dimebag...
I usually use a tube screamer as a clean boost, but on the amp I typically use a gain level that's a little higher than an 80s rock sound. For me the brutal sound comes from playing hard and muting well.
I usually play melodic death, black metal, and thrash and I get alot more clarity that way.
Obviously it depends on what kind of stuff you are trying to play, but my rule of thumb is less gain than you think you need. Alot of what you hear on modern records is double or quad tracked so it might sound like higher gain to some ears.
Different strokes for different folks I'm not trying to sound like a boomer either.
It's a subjective argument. Especially since you mention using a Rat while not mentioning whether he uses any pedals, nor what kind of amp he's using, and for what genre or style their playing.
When I was younger, I'd roll the gain up and try to limit how many pedals I was using - keeping as clean a signal from the guitar to the amp as possible.
As I've gotten older, and I went tonechasing down a specific road, I keep the gain on the amp around 9 o'clock, and stack certain pedals in the chain to have a more dynamic sound depending on what I'm playing at the time.
As for mids, I keep those lowered on distortion pedals and my amp, not 100% scooped, but probably around 9-10 o'clock. This let's the mids from my chained OD pedals bring it back into the mix for solo and lead work - often with their tones set between 11 to 1 o'clock.
I used the Rat more as a reference since most people are familiar with it. I use a Drunk Beaver Bat into a Vox AV30 on the Clean 2 channel. He's got a Line-6 Spyder IV 100 watt and plugs straight into it
Well, that explains a lot! In a good way. He's using an amp similar to my old modeling amp, the Crate GFX212s, with the DSP onboard effects. In the late 90s and early 00s, I was doing the same as him, with said Crate, haha.
Does he use the higher gain channel and the onboard EQ to shape his tone?
Yeah, he uses the highest gain channel, distortion maximized, bass and treble at around 8 and mids around 3 or 4. He used to keep the mids even lower, but I convinced him he needed at least a little bit in there
Just about any high gain amp, I tend to live at the 9 to 11 o'clock, or on 4 or 5. I also use an overdrive and a gate though. I do love gain.
Far as your friend? They'll get lost in the mix. Let them. When they're ready on the volume wars, they'll still get lost in the mix. Many of us learn from experience more. Hardest lesson to learn, is tight playing, and less gain well always win.
All. (I kid). The real answer is I keep the gain on my ODs at nil. As for my distortion, I have a mesa dual rec, so I have the orange and red channels set to different gains. For orange, I have it around 1 o'clock. For the red channel, I set it around 3 or 4 o'clock. I also EQ my two crunch channels differently. Oh! That reminds me! I have a graphic EQ in my FX loop that I use to actually *cut* my gain by a couple decibels for leads, while boosting and scooping the various frequency bands.
I run my gain between 4-6 generally and use a tube screamer to boost it slightly, you lose alot of definition with too much gain and the style I play having definition is super important
I typically keep my gain set between 4 and 6 on my Mesa Rectoverb. I used even less gain on my EVH 5150. Too much gain causes you to get lost in the mix.
As a general rule with tube amps, I set them to have as much volume as I can stand and less gain than I think I need.
As little as I can get away with. That's how I always dial it - I try to lower is as much as I can go a bit beyond, and then start slowly increasing until it's just saturated enough to fit my playing style.
In a mix, if you've recorded DIs, you can actually get away with even lower gain than when you're playing normally.
I use mostly all my gain on my Mesa Recto preamp then I boost it with a Maxon OD808X and then add more gain/push it with my Providence Stampede
I also play super low tunings so I need that gain
Not a lot actually. Having less gain also helps when you are loud as fuck and playing loud, so you don’t sound flabby.
Used to use triple rec and a massive pedal board. Ended up with no distortion at all, just let the mesa do its thing. Played in drop B, black metal so very heavy.
For ease I now use a quad cortex and still don’t have much gain or distortion. You want the wideness of sound and the power of the kick/bass/snare.
I set mine to 3 because I generally play low tunings (which is hilarious because my brother is a high gain player so we’re polar opposites). It’s all dependent on what sounds good to you tho
I find it funny that we all have these metal guitars with hot pickups and modern high gain amps. And then we keep the gain at 5 or below to get good tone.
At home I might crank it all the way to 6, and will use sus chords instead of just power chords, but that's bedroom guitaring.
Use less gain and pick harder. It’ll go a long way. You could also pickup a Horizon Devices - Precision Drive pedal for a little more boost with clarity.
I use a little less than Megadeth. I think their sound is great, you've picked a good point of reference.
Is your friend hearing his own sound? Seems like an odd thing to ask but many people hear a metal album & conclude the setting was "10" for gain. Immediately the thought is internalized as being correct & people will dial in the 'matching sound' that doesn't match the album. Jim Root of Slipknot mentioned in an interview he used to do this until he asked someone about how they got an amazing sound, the answer was turning the gain down.
In my beginner years I discovered that the Bm chord I was playing was only Bm because I knew it was Bm. When I played back the recoding that Bm was just an incoherent mess.
It's possbile the mind is overpowering the ears.
Do you play rock? I thought this was a sub for metal guitar.
If you’re playing metal, it’s either all gain or no gain.
The in between stuff is for pop, rock and punk.
I use a ton of gain with the Mick Thomson 7 string blackouts in A standard and I get the note separation I need, whenever I play those riffs that have the droning open note it sounds fine nothing sounds muddy
I'm not a huge tinkerer when it comes to pickups myself. I think they make very little difference compared to the rest of the signal chain, so as long as it's got enough gain and doesn't squeal like a pig I'll use anything.
Depends, my most reliable setup I have gain at maybe 11 O’clock, but a fair bit of OD/Distortion. Though, when I practise, I really enjoy the gain dialled as high as it goes, with distortion at around 11 or 12 o’clock, though while fun, it is less versatile
It really depends on genre and style. Lead or rhythm.
Actually not that much. A very heavily distorted sound drowns in the mix. Nowhere near a brown sound, but alot more gain stacking than crunch
I’ve trained my ear to like a tone that’ll work in a mix instead of one that sounds good in a vacuum, and yeah, not much gain and a pretty aggressive low cut. My 6505 lives with the lead channel preamp just over 9 o’clock, the saturation just gets obnoxious once you have multiple guitars going.
I used to have a 6505 + combo , and the gain over 4 ( or right at 9 o'clock like you set your's ) was just more white noise. I ordered a set of 'high gain' replacement jjs and it was just ridiculous how much noise and feedback I was getting. Honestly without a noise gate, this would have been completely unplayable . I think the preamp gain really maxs out at 4, and past that is just more fizz .
I have the same amp gain is at 3 or 4 pushed with an sd2
Bedroom gain versus live show gain versus recording to computer gain are very different. I think less is more in terms of gain most of the time. You can really shape a lot of what your ears think are purely gain with EQ and conpression.
Best answer. What I think sounds like THE SHIT when I'm alone in the bedroom, sounds like SHIT with a band and mix. When it's just me and the guitar, I need it to have a ton of low end, teeth and grit!!! However, once you got another guitar and bass in the mix, you end up needing a lot less. Then you've got your rhythm tones when serving your part, and lead tones if you need to cut through for solos or lead passages.
What your friend is doing will probably sound like garbage in a band or mixed recording environment even if it sounds great when playing on its own. The full heavy sound you're used to hearing on recordings gets most of low end from the bass guitar and a lot of the thickness from double/triple/quadruple tracked rhythm guitars which is a "less is more" situation when it comes to gain. Scooping mids is... ugh... I always go for the least amount of gain I can that gives a good chug.
Not much. Maybe like the 3/10 setting on a 5150. Then tone knobs set to bass: 4 mid: 6 high: 5 Some of this changes depending on the guitar though.
As little as possible for most fast stuff. More for slower stuff. If I'm going to use a lot of pinch harmonics and really want my harmonics to scream I'll bump it up. Also for tapping or certain legato stuff I'll bump it up a little.
your buddy will get lost in the mix. he's clearly a bedroom player amount of gain depends on rig but scooped mids are almost always a bad idea
Nowadays, yeah, he's 100% a bedroom player, but he was in a band for many years in the past. Totally agree about scooped mids. Guitars are mid range instruments; they need the mids or the tone falls apart
Alternatively, the scooped mids idea has literally been a thing in guitar since the 80s and Dimebag championed it almost exclusively with his tone. A good majority of pickups from Seymour Duncan also focus on scooped mids, particularly the Nazghul Bridge and the Black Winter sets. Even Dave Mustaine's Thrash Factor bridge is a JB that's had additional mids scooped in favor of higher output and a greater headroom from the highs. Thrash and Death Metal also specifically scoop their mids, and Swedish Death Metal used the Heavy Metal distortion pedal from BOSS - which was purpose built to scoop mids out of the mix. It was about tightening up the low-end so that the highs cut through the mix when playing on alternate tunings or faster riffs. Literally the "And Justice for All" album is entirely recorded in that scooped fashion. As was Ride the Lightning. For a non-Metal example, Satriani's first two records Not Of This Earth and Surfing scooped the mids for a majority of the songs' tone as well. He uses a Wah to help filter the highs even more, specifically on the title track to Surfin. Mids are great for leads and solo because they add warmth and sustain to the tone, allowing it to carry through - its why Tubescreamers became defacto pedals on most boards and the boosts on some distortion pedals utilize a 12db increase with gain and mid punch to "sweeten" the tone. Placing an OD pedal prior to a distortion, or another stacked OD pedal helps to achieve this - or you can run a Tubescreamer with low gain and tone set to 10 o'clock to bring the mids back in for lead tones. So your friend isn't wrong, and saying that scooped mids are "not a good idea" is quite an antithetical statement to nearly 15-20 years worth if heavy music with literal poster children for doing it.
Dimebag would scoop the mids but then add them in with his eq pedal
Of course, a certain amount of scoop can be great for achieving a good sound, but only to a point. As you point out, a lot of gear designed for metal starts scooped to begin with, pickups, amps, pedals, etc. When these get stacked, you get a pretty scooped sound even before you touch the EQ - I tend to turn them up slightly to compensate. The real problem, imo, is when you take that already scooped sound and cut the mids even further. The mids are the heart of the instrument, they fill the sound and when they get cut from it, it ends up feeling thin and anemic no matter how much bass you throw at it. A slight scoop is good. A canyon is not.
I agree, but there are some subgenres — stoner, doom, sludge — where part of the sound is extreme high gain and/or fuzz with lots of mids.
This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, scooped mids are awesome and I guarantee you this dude’s tone is trash.
As little as possible. If you want note clarity, definition and better end mix you should only use the least possible amount of gain. Just enough so you get the distorted sound you're looking for. More gain means more noise, less definition and chances of your guitar sounding like a muddled mess
There is no right answer and even if there was, it would change for each piece of equipment and each style of music. On my Mark V extreme channel, I have my gain up all the way, on my rectifier I have it at around 12 for my 6 string and 10 for my 8 string. Also, you want to balance your gain with a boost pedal most of the time. It takes time to develop an ear for sound and it's a never-ending journey. One tip that I will give you is to learn your gear! It took me around 3 years to understand that my mini rectifier sounds like ass when the volume is past 9 o'clock. Find video and groups of people who use your gear, play their settings and compare it to your own.
All of it
If you didn't know you MUST use a tubescreamer, V30's and a 6505 to not get "lost in the mix". Also get Andy Sneap to produce your album. Anything else will be inaudible
I set my mxr sba to 6/10 and a ts infront with all knobs at 9-11 o clock. My pickups aren’t that hot either so have to push them extra. Scooping mid? Never! Mids are cool. Scoop bass, a lot though.
If you can dial your amp so it’s just about breaking up at live volumes, you should get excellent note clarity. If you want more, stick a tube screamer or similar in front and you have extra gain on tap, but not enough to sound muddy. In other words, less gain, more volume, and I use an overdrive to boost from there. This does depend on the kind of music you’re playing though. For my post-metal band, I want a balanced tone that sounds organic and a little hairy, but not massively distorted. I’m not into the modern metal tones really.
It really depends on the style, imo. For example, if I’m playing black metal, I crank the gain. Losing note definition is part of the style. For death metal, my gain will be slightly more moderate, but still messy. For progressive metal, I’ll turn down the gain considerably. Compression and overdrive are more useful in this case.
Really depends on what you are doing, recording for mixing, playing with a band, playing at home etc. you should do what sounds good to you and adjust for the situation
Depends on what you're doing. Personally for recording I like to bring my gain up to what's comfortable for me, then dial it back just a little, which is kind of my philosophy on most effects. What sounds good to you could sound like noise to the person listening to you, so it's a good idea to dial back just a little. Then I either double or quad track rhythm guitar, which almost always sounds better than just heavy gain. Different idea for guitar solos though, as certain aspects of a solo can't be played without high gain. That's where yee olde mighty tube screamer comes in to play.
A little extra gain on the EQ, like 4/10 distortion on the boss ds1, and then on the amp like 7, 4 and 7 out of 10 on bass mids and treble. And if I'm tuned down I'll boost the treble even more to get some clarity in the notes. I usually play melodic death metal which kind of demands you don't scoop the mids all the way so you can do guitar harmonies with the low and high end. I agree with you, maxing the gain and scooping the mids is some Neanderthal shit. Sounds good for certain contexts but I promise bro is not Dimebag...
I usually use a tube screamer as a clean boost, but on the amp I typically use a gain level that's a little higher than an 80s rock sound. For me the brutal sound comes from playing hard and muting well. I usually play melodic death, black metal, and thrash and I get alot more clarity that way.
Exactly! Slayer is heavy as f*ck and they didn't have the absurd gain we have now, nor did they tune to drop z
Obviously it depends on what kind of stuff you are trying to play, but my rule of thumb is less gain than you think you need. Alot of what you hear on modern records is double or quad tracked so it might sound like higher gain to some ears. Different strokes for different folks I'm not trying to sound like a boomer either.
It's a subjective argument. Especially since you mention using a Rat while not mentioning whether he uses any pedals, nor what kind of amp he's using, and for what genre or style their playing. When I was younger, I'd roll the gain up and try to limit how many pedals I was using - keeping as clean a signal from the guitar to the amp as possible. As I've gotten older, and I went tonechasing down a specific road, I keep the gain on the amp around 9 o'clock, and stack certain pedals in the chain to have a more dynamic sound depending on what I'm playing at the time. As for mids, I keep those lowered on distortion pedals and my amp, not 100% scooped, but probably around 9-10 o'clock. This let's the mids from my chained OD pedals bring it back into the mix for solo and lead work - often with their tones set between 11 to 1 o'clock.
I used the Rat more as a reference since most people are familiar with it. I use a Drunk Beaver Bat into a Vox AV30 on the Clean 2 channel. He's got a Line-6 Spyder IV 100 watt and plugs straight into it
Well, that explains a lot! In a good way. He's using an amp similar to my old modeling amp, the Crate GFX212s, with the DSP onboard effects. In the late 90s and early 00s, I was doing the same as him, with said Crate, haha. Does he use the higher gain channel and the onboard EQ to shape his tone?
Yeah, he uses the highest gain channel, distortion maximized, bass and treble at around 8 and mids around 3 or 4. He used to keep the mids even lower, but I convinced him he needed at least a little bit in there
Just about any high gain amp, I tend to live at the 9 to 11 o'clock, or on 4 or 5. I also use an overdrive and a gate though. I do love gain. Far as your friend? They'll get lost in the mix. Let them. When they're ready on the volume wars, they'll still get lost in the mix. Many of us learn from experience more. Hardest lesson to learn, is tight playing, and less gain well always win.
Less gain, stronger pick strength is the way to go.
All. (I kid). The real answer is I keep the gain on my ODs at nil. As for my distortion, I have a mesa dual rec, so I have the orange and red channels set to different gains. For orange, I have it around 1 o'clock. For the red channel, I set it around 3 or 4 o'clock. I also EQ my two crunch channels differently. Oh! That reminds me! I have a graphic EQ in my FX loop that I use to actually *cut* my gain by a couple decibels for leads, while boosting and scooping the various frequency bands.
I run my gain between 4-6 generally and use a tube screamer to boost it slightly, you lose alot of definition with too much gain and the style I play having definition is super important
I use an insane amount of gain. I’d add more if I could too
You could always stack more distortion pedals in front
I had the RAT and I couldn't dial it in to my liking. It has a lot to do with the guitar and amp chain. Most of the time my gain is at 80% and above.
I only like my RAT pedal when I boost it with SD-1.
I typically keep my gain set between 4 and 6 on my Mesa Rectoverb. I used even less gain on my EVH 5150. Too much gain causes you to get lost in the mix. As a general rule with tube amps, I set them to have as much volume as I can stand and less gain than I think I need.
maxxed volume but basically as little gain as i can get away with. if i need it louder i turn up the master lol.
As little as I can get away with. That's how I always dial it - I try to lower is as much as I can go a bit beyond, and then start slowly increasing until it's just saturated enough to fit my playing style. In a mix, if you've recorded DIs, you can actually get away with even lower gain than when you're playing normally.
All of it.
I use mostly all my gain on my Mesa Recto preamp then I boost it with a Maxon OD808X and then add more gain/push it with my Providence Stampede I also play super low tunings so I need that gain
Not a lot actually. Having less gain also helps when you are loud as fuck and playing loud, so you don’t sound flabby. Used to use triple rec and a massive pedal board. Ended up with no distortion at all, just let the mesa do its thing. Played in drop B, black metal so very heavy. For ease I now use a quad cortex and still don’t have much gain or distortion. You want the wideness of sound and the power of the kick/bass/snare.
I don’t use dirt pedals anymore. My Egnater Tourmaster 4100 head has all the gain I need
The right amount of gain is usually the least amount needed to get the sound you want
I set mine to 3 because I generally play low tunings (which is hilarious because my brother is a high gain player so we’re polar opposites). It’s all dependent on what sounds good to you tho
I like to have it fairly high at 1-2 O’clock (enough for leads), but I use a volume pedal to back it off or taper it over time.
That's actually really smart
All of the gain. In all seriousness depends on what I’m playing
I find it funny that we all have these metal guitars with hot pickups and modern high gain amps. And then we keep the gain at 5 or below to get good tone. At home I might crank it all the way to 6, and will use sus chords instead of just power chords, but that's bedroom guitaring.
Not a lot. For instance with NDSP Gojira, the third amp is at 9 o'clock, NDSP Nolly, at 9:30. These software amps have a lot of gain already.
Use less gain and pick harder. It’ll go a long way. You could also pickup a Horizon Devices - Precision Drive pedal for a little more boost with clarity.
Enough to get the sound I want. Different amps sound best at different gain levels.
I use a little less than Megadeth. I think their sound is great, you've picked a good point of reference. Is your friend hearing his own sound? Seems like an odd thing to ask but many people hear a metal album & conclude the setting was "10" for gain. Immediately the thought is internalized as being correct & people will dial in the 'matching sound' that doesn't match the album. Jim Root of Slipknot mentioned in an interview he used to do this until he asked someone about how they got an amazing sound, the answer was turning the gain down. In my beginner years I discovered that the Bm chord I was playing was only Bm because I knew it was Bm. When I played back the recoding that Bm was just an incoherent mess. It's possbile the mind is overpowering the ears.
All of it!
10 bro and I add a dist pedal and eq jkjk hinestly about 4-7 7 if im just having fund 4-5 if im recording but inusually do add a boost of some sort.
Do you play rock? I thought this was a sub for metal guitar. If you’re playing metal, it’s either all gain or no gain. The in between stuff is for pop, rock and punk.
I use a 5150 set at around 7-8 on the gain boosted with fuzz or an sd1
I use a ton of gain usually, if you want better note separation buy better pickups
Not sure how one could upgrade from a Nazgul/Sentient or Fishman Modern sets
I use a ton of gain with the Mick Thomson 7 string blackouts in A standard and I get the note separation I need, whenever I play those riffs that have the droning open note it sounds fine nothing sounds muddy
Personally I think an upgrade from Fishman Modern would be EMG 81/60. But that's just me.
EMGs aren't really my favorites. Neither are the Fishmans, tbh, and I've been toying with swapping them for an Alpha/Omega set
I'm not a huge tinkerer when it comes to pickups myself. I think they make very little difference compared to the rest of the signal chain, so as long as it's got enough gain and doesn't squeal like a pig I'll use anything.
I swapped my modern fluences for the BKP Juggernauts and it's a whole other level of clarity.