Recording Electric Guitars at home studios using our Audio Interface is always a challenge. Many folks tell me, “I don’t get that Rock tone or Great Sounding Guitar at my Home Studio”  This is a very common problem everyone faces and particularly the starters.

Here are 7 Easy Steps to get great Sound from your Electric Guitar

1.  Use a Proper DI to record your Electric Guitar directly into your interface. Most of your interface has built-in DI. Set the switch to INST or DI and ensure your gain levels are not crossing -10 dBFS in your DAW. This will have enough Headroom for your post processing during Mixing.

2. To record using the Guitar Amp, use a Dynamic Microphone like the SM57 which is one the best for Electric Guitar. Place the mic slightly at the corner of the Speaker cone about 2.5 inches from the Cabinet. This is not a written rule. Try to move the mic around this area and stop at the Sweet spot. You will have a great tone of the Amp sound in your DAW! The size of the cabinet does not Matter!

3. To record a Bass Guitar at home, always try to record directly using the DI or into the Interface itself. This will avoid low Frequency when your room is not Treated properly.

4. EQ on Electric Guitar – Always add an HPF ( High Pass Filter) on your insert channel in your DAW and roll off to 110 Hz as you don’t need that LOW rumble boomy Sound in your mix. This will give you some space in your whole mix for the Kick Drum and Bass Guitar to set well in your Mix. Trust me, HPF is like a Magic wand to your mix.

5. EQ on Bass Guitar – I would suggest you set your HPF around 65Hz or 70Hz. This is just to remove some unwanted LOW rumble noise in your Bass Guitar.

6. Compression on Electric and Bass Guitar – I usually set my compressor around 3:1 and adjust the Threshold not more than -15dB This threshold depends on how loud or soft I want my mix. Have a Gentle -3dB of Gain Reduction on your compressor and see how much Makeup gain has to be increased in your mix.

7. If you have a treated room, try to record your Electric or bass using two tracks. One with the Mic and other using Now add a Saturation Plugin in your DAW and  Guitar AMP simulator like the SANS AMP on the DI Track. You can blend both the Track to get a good guitar sound in your Song!

L. Baba Prasad. He is the Ownder and Chief Sound/Mix & Mastering Engineer at Digi Sound Studio. He also teaches Sound Engineering and Music Production courses. For more details, visit www.digisoundstudio.com / www.digisoundacademy.com