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Here are some great tips to get better metal guitar recordings.

1) Reduce the lows (bass) of your guitar signal before the distortion, then boost the lows after distortion. This is how you get a very tight rhythm. Use a Tube Screamer type pedal or the Hardwire CM-2, to cut the lows before the amp. Then you can use a bit more gain to sound more brutal without losing your dynamics. With a pedal that lets you adjust the low end, you can make even a crappy farty amp sound tight. Just turn the gain all the way down on the pedal, turn the level up to middle or higher, and then adjust the low and high knobs to taste. If you turn the treble down on the amp, but turn the treble up on the pedal, you’ll get both a warm and rounded distortion tone (like in power chords as they ring out) with simultaneously accentuated pick attack. If you’re using an amp sim, use an EQ prior and reduce the bass with a gently sloped low cut, boost mids slightly for same effect.

2) If using an amp sim, put a compressor or transient designer before it. Set the compressor with a 20 to 40 ms attack time so that the pick attack of the string comes through loud, but the rest is quietened. This results in a more dynamic tone from the amp sim. A transient designer normally used on drums can likewise increase the string attack.

3) Don’t turn your gain all the way up on your amp or preamp. Heaviness comes from a balance between dynamics and distortion, not from the highest distortion possible. You don’t need super high gain to sound heavy. Too much gain reduces the difference between palm muted and open notes, reduces dynamics, and takes away all the impact and punch. Palm mute and pick string repeatedly and turn the gain up just enough to get some sharpness that damps out quick, but not so much you have a continuous sharp buzz throughout.

4) If using an overdrive pedal – real or simulated – keep the drive control low, but turn it up just enough to control the crunch of palm mutes. That is, on the amp you can keep the gain lower so that chords come through clean, while palm mutes that might therefore sound weak retain their crunch due to the bit of drive added prior to the amp head.

5) If you’re using a real mic and cabinet, you will need a 4×12 and standard mics like the SM57, Royer R121, MD421, e906, and/or Heil PR40 to even get close to what you hear in professional recordings. Even so, if the room you’re recording in has bad acoustics, results may be less than stellar. If it works out for you, cool, but if not, look into good amp sim plugins like Amplitube 3 or Peavey Revalver. Bypass their cab sims and use third party cab impulses by Catharsis, Guitar Hacks, or Redwirez. You’ll get 90-95% the sound of an ideal mic/cab/room combo, repeatedly day after day with that, once you get the setting right.

6) To shape a guitar sound, first use a parametric EQ and sweep through the spectrum looking for annoying, ear piercing, grating frequencies. Do a narrow cut at those. Ear piercing fizz is often found in 4.8-5.2kHz region, digital shrillness around 7k and 9k. You don’t want to reduce all highs through a low pass at 6k like some people recommend; rather you want to reduce the bad high frequencies and leave the rest. Afterwards, use another EQ for gentle sculpting of your tone. Pay attention to the 100 to 500 hz area — you might find a spot or two that are adding boxy sounding mud to your mix. If you find yourself boosting anything by more than 5dB, then there’s a problem with your signal source or choice of impulse – go back to the source (amp, guitar, pedal, etc…) and correct that, as you want as good a signal as possible since the more you process it afterwards the more undesirable and artificial artifacts you introduce. Before you go to town with your EQ, make sure you have selected the cab impulse (if using sims) that get you closest to your ideal sound. Don’t use a crappy impulse and then try to fix it with EQ.

7) You cannot evaluate the merit of a guitar sound if it’s solo and mono, well unless it’s a lead guitar sound. For rhythm, you MUST have at least one track panned left and another similarly played track panned right. Only through this stereo effect can you know whether your choice of impulse and EQ is good. What may sound fine mono and solo may not sound fine stereo. And even then, that’s still not as ideal as what it will sound like in the final mix with vocals. For instance, by itself, even a solo’ed stereo guitar track may sound rich and full, but that’s because it has frequencies that would otherwise be taken up by other instruments like bass or synths or vocals. So get it sounding as sharp, full, tight, and crisp as possible in solo stereo, then later don’t be afraid to make a shallow broad scoop in the 800 to 2k region to make some room for the vocals.

8) To each of your rhythm guitar tracks, add a mono room reverb if necessary. You can add it directly onto the track, or you can do a send to a bus. The send/bus method allows you to EQ and compress your reverb-only portion to perfection before blending it in with your main track. If your guitar sounds too close to the ears when using headphones, then definitely add some room verb. Even though it’s mono, it will still seem further away and smoother and more real. An up close fizzy sound is half of what’s wrong with most amp sim examples. Room verb (and the compression / transient designer prior to the amp sim) does a lot to improve the realism.

9) For the thickest tone, quad track your guitars. That means play the same thing twice and pan both tracks full left, and a complementary thing played twice and panned full right. That’s four tracks total, a pair left and a pair right. In each pair, play one with regular level of distortion gain, and the other with a bit less. Try not to stack the same exact guitar tone together; have one be more full and rounded, the other more mid range and sharp sounding. This way the buzz from the distortion in each won’t interfere, as one buzzes less and is taking care of the lower and mid frequencies to provide greater body and dynamics. You can also get by with just double tracking (one left, one right) IF the EQ of each track is finely tuned — yes it is possible, you just need the right amp settings, right impulse (if using amp sim) and right EQing. The better your guitar sound, the more you can get away with just double tracking. If you do double track, make each track slightly different in the EQ or guitar or preamp or impulse choice, which will add greater stereo separation for a big sound.

10) From your album collection, pick songs that you think have the perfect rhythm guitar tone. Use it as a reference for when you’re establishing your own guitar tone. You can even use a Match EQ to get an idea of how your tone differs from theirs, but don’t use the Match EQ’s generated match curve to mold yours into their sound; it won’t sound right; rather match it visually and in a general way using a separate parametric EQ, and most of all, use your ears to come up with something that, while different, is still good. Finally, try it out in a full mix and see if it works. This Match EQ trick is mainly to give you an objective idea of what exactly is happening in these professionally mastered recordings. You may realize they differ in a part of the EQ spectrum that previously you hadn’t thought to examine.

Those antihistamine mosquito bite sprays and sticks barely even work for me. But after much experimenting, I have found the perfect solution. Tiger Balm.

Maybe Icy Hot and similar will work as well. Point being that itches are, in fact, tiny little pains. The same nerve receptors that give you the sensation of pain at high levels of activity, create itching at low levels. Thus a balm that works for muscle aches ought to work for mosquito bites. And indeed it does. The cool, warm, tingly sensation of Tiger Balm does a nice job of numbing and overriding the mosquito bite itch.

This is an informal review of the Apogee Duet 2 audio interface, which I have been using for two weeks now. I’ll go through each feature and share my observations.

Key Features

• Cast aluminum body with black glossy plastic top. The aluminum looks brushed (but is actually cast) and matches the aluminum finish on Apple products. Plastic top is very shiny and picks up dust and fingerprints easily.

• Large aluminum wheel button. Rotates with gentle clicks, with each click increasing the volume/gain level by one unit. Button itself can be pushed, which switches between settings for the 2 inputs and 2 outputs. Push is sturdy feeling. The button has very slight wobble on some Duet 2s, which is within manufacturing tolerances.

• OLED screen, measures 2.5 by 3 cm. Resolution seems around 110 dpi, pretty basic but does the job. Looks to be situated about 2mm beneath the surface of the plastic top. Screen is not too visible in direct sunlight, but easily visible in regular room electric lighting. The contrast is lower than shown in the promo pictures, and you can see the black background of the screen as a dark gray against the surrounding black plastic. These are minor cosmetic observations.

• Meters on the screen. These are very useable and respond accurately to the input/output signals.

• Headphone out. Apogee is revered for its DAC (digital-to-analog-converters). Compared to the Mac Mini line out, or Focusrite Saffire Pro headphone out, the Duet 2 is like going to 320kbps MP3 from a 128kbps MP3. The difference is that noticeable. It’s remarkably smooth and balanced sounding without any harshness anywhere, and yet without rolling off any highs or lows. An incredibly honest and true sound without color. Unlike harsher sounding DACs, these won’t give you (as much) ear fatigue. Also has very good image separation among various layers in music, so that you can hear each thing clearly. The DAC on the Duet 2 will reveal any flaws in a mix. Also, the Duet 2 has more power to drive headphones, despite being USB instead of Firewire; I doubt there are any headphones it lacks juice to drive to loud volumes.

• Balanced Out. These are 1/4” outputs for studio monitors. Balanced means the signal is less prone to noise over longer cable lengths. The DAC is the same as for the headphones, just as clear and detailed and smooth yet accurate.

• Maestro 2. This is the software app used to route Duet 2 signals and set functions internally. Straightforward to use, not much to it. Single window and slicker looking design compared to Maestro 1. Should be mentioned that if you change the headphone volume on the Duet, on the computer a headphone volume icon comes up with the volume bar showing.

• Breakout cables. Just four output wires this time with the mic and instrument inputs shared on the same connector. The cables are pretty sturdy.

• Preamps. Just as good as the DAC. Does 75dB of gain without hiss. An SM7B sounds very crisp and clear on this. Phantom power is activated via Maestro 2 setting. I would imagine that two SM7B’s plus a power-hungry headphone might require use of the external AC power supply (included) but I haven’t tested or encountered such a situation yet.

• Touch buttons. Two buttons, outlined as faint gray circles between the wheel and the screen. Each can be assigned a function: mute, clear meters, sum stereo to mono, and dim (turn volume down). Stereo to mono is convenient if you like mixing in mono. Very easy to just tap the button instead of having to navigate to that function in your DAW. The buttons do work with the protective film that the Duet 2 comes with, even though the instruction manual says to remove the film for best results. The film, by the way, is a soft transparent vinyl-like “sticks to glass without glue” kind of film, and not that milky thin film you see on certain cheap electronics. Long story short, you can leave it on if you wish, although there are some bubbles in it.

• Sample Rate goes up to 192 kHz. I never go above 44.1kHz so haven’t tested this yet, but it’s there.

• Overall form factor. Measures 6.25 × 4 × 7/8 inches and seems rather handy, like a pocket field manual. Due to the plastic top I wouldn’t just throw it in a bag though…would maybe get a small padded case or wrap a hand towel around it.

Subjective Impressions

It is absolute worth the money if you want maximum quality in the smallest package with the best design. That’s basically Apple philosophy, which Apogee shares. This, versus other similar or cheaper priced interfaces which may have many more ins and outs and bells and whistles, but which are clunky and don’t do any one thing extremely well. If all you need are two inputs, if you’re on a Mac, and if you can afford the $595, then the Duet 2 is a sure choice. The next best thing in terms of portable interfaces is either an RME Babyface ($100 more, does some things better and some things worse than the Duet 2) and the Metric Halo ULN-2 Expanded ($2200, truly a step up from the Duet 2).

How does it compare to a $200-$300 interface? Well, the latter is “pretty decent” compared to the Duet 2 which is “amazingly excellent.” The difference is large enough that you can and will hear it, and other producers and artists will hear a difference in the result, but the difference is not so large that the average listener who casually hears your tracks without A/B’ing between them will notice.

In other words, you can do pretty well with, say, a Focusrite Saffire Pro unit. Just if you want a step up, increased portability, faster workflow, and the comfort of knowing you have pro level quality converters, then the Duet 2 won’t disappoint. Personally I value the DAC the most, both for regular listening and especially for tracking and mixing, because what good are accurate monitors or accurate headphones if the DAC is inaccurate?

Audio pros know that $595 is actually on the low end of the scale for equipment since single-channel preamps can run up to a couple thousand bucks! So everyone seems to agree the Duet 2 is one of the biggest bangs for your buck out there right now.

Does the rotary knob on your guitar, amp, or pedal cut out or make crackling noises as you turn it?

If so, the fix is quite easy. All you need is this:

Carefully access the potentiometer giving you trouble, should look similar to this:

… and release 1-2 drops of FaderLube into a hole in the case. Then turn the knob completely back and forth 10 times, and reassemble.

My Blackstar Ht-Dual distortion pedal developed noisy pots, and I put 1-2 drops in each rectangular hole atop the white plastic housing of the potentiometers. After turning the knobs, then reassembling, the pedal was good as new.

Take note that DeOxit has other products (D5, DN5, D100) meant for cleaning contacts and switches. DO NOT use these on potentiometers, as they will eat away the carbon track inside that the sliding contact rides on. FaderLube linked above is non corrosive and is the safest of all DeOxit products to use on pots and sliding faders.