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If you’re thinking of buying an expensive guitar cable for better tone, READ THIS ARTICLE FIRST!

Guitar cables play a surprisingly large role in your guitar tone. It can move your tone toward one or the other extremes:

A) muffled, dull, lifeless, muddy, honkey, quackey

B) thin, brittle, ice-picky, shrill, compressed

These are the cable factors that contribute to either tone:

Towards (A): longer, coiled, higher capacitance, lower conductivity — generally the cheaper cables.

Towards (B): straight, short, expensive, lower capacitance, higher conductivity — generally the expensive cables.

Now depending on whether your guitar is already too bright or too dull, you can pick the appropriate cable and achieve either of the following:

Right amount of (A) – fuller, warmer, smoother, punchier

Right amount of (B) – clearer, sharper, brighter, more open

So why the difference between cables? Mostly it has to do with cable capacitance. Between the inner and outer conductors of the cable there is insulation, and the combo makes for a capacitor that is in parallel to your guitar pickups. The pickups themselves are inductors, and inductor in parallel with capacitor makes a resonant circuit that slopes up and peaks somewhere between 2 kHz and 5 kHz, between a “half cocked whah” sound and “piercing presence” sound. Above that peak, the spectrum drops off. So it’s not just sucking the treble, but it’s also boosting different parts of the mids.

The greater the capacitance in your cable, which comes with it being coiled and/or longer and/or cheaper made, the lower the resonant frequency and the greater/sharper the peak.

Thus if your guitar is too bright, using a longer/cheaper/coiled cable can bring out more mids while taming the highs, leading to a punchier and less brittle tone. That’s why the more expensive cables like Mogami, Monster, PlanetWaves Instrument Pro, etc… aren’t always a good choice, since compared to your current cable they could make your tone more brittle and compressed.

There are guitarists who want to sound like the 70s rock legends (Jimi Hendrix) and employ the same long coiled guitar cables to get that smooth middy Hendrix sound. Sometimes these cables are quite expensive if they’re expressly made for that purpose. But you don’t really need such cables.

Let’s say you already have a Mogami or Planet Waves cable that’s a bit too bright and brittle sounding… how do you replicate adding a longer / coiled cable? You simply add a small capacitor across your pickup output wires (ground and hot). It should be a ceramic cap in the 220 pF to 470 pF range. That will tame a brittle sound. You can go higher (1 nF = 1000 pF or more) if you are going for a 70s tone.

Some may ask, why not use your tone pot? Well it’s because adjusting your tone control raises or lowers the height of the resonance peak, NOT its frequency. So you won’t get that punchy mid-boost from rolling down the highs with a tone pot, as you would from adding a capacitor across your pickup or using a longer/coiled/cheaper cable. You would get more or less of the resonant peaking that the tone pot capacitor already determines.

The advantage of adding a separate capacitor is that now you can use the more expensive cables that are inherently more durable. There’s no sense in getting a cheap cable to get a tone if it’ll start crackling and going out in less than a year.

Keep in mind the above only applies to the cable between your guitar, if it has passive pickups, and the first thing it plugs into. The cables after that don’t matter because active pedals are like buffers that keep the cable capacitance from affecting the resonance peak of the tone. Thus for live use, one might see a guitarist use a 10-20 foot coiled cable into a pedal board, which then runs out through a 50 foot cable to the amp head. Only the 10-20 foot coiled cable in this example affects the guitar tone, not really the 50 foot one after the pedal board. So with the capacitor mod above, you can use just a 10 foot high quality cable and still get the same tone as using a 20 foot coiled one for instance.

For further explanations and diagrams, see this informative article:

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

The low piano keys have a distinct metallic grumble to them. You may have heard the same type of bright grumble in certain bass guitar sounds, especially in rock and metal. This type of bass sound has way more harmonics than, say, the sound you get from plucking flatwound strings with your fingers on a clean amp.

Why do we want a piano type sound? Because instead of a muffled booming, you get a muscular, defined, agile, powerful type of bass that cuts through. This is especially important in rock and metal where guitar distortion may override bass definition.

How do we achieve the “piano” tone?

Get Good Strings — NEW Strings

First you need strings that emit a rich harmonic content when plucked or picked. Two top choices are:

1) DR Lo-Rider overwound strings. Deep low end, clear piano-like top, balanced mids, lasts a long time. Hex core, stiffer and thus holds up better at lower tunings.

2) DR Hi-Beam strings. More mids and upper mids, brighter top, more flexible than the Lo-Riders. Round core.

3) D’Addario ProSteels. Brighter and clankier than DR, but go dead faster. Also rougher on the frets and fingers, but again they are brighter. They are also 1/2 the cost of DR.

DR strings like the Lo-Rider or Hi-Beams are over/compression wound so that more metal is wrapped on the core string for the same gauge versus other brands. More metal packed together means more longitudinal vibrations, and thus more harmonics. This makes them more similar to piano strings than, say, Ernie Balls. Unlike a guitar, the bass is extremely dependent on the kind of strings used because half of what you hear is the harmonics, which vary greatly with string type. So try some DR strings.

Use Clean Strings

If you must record with old strings and can’t afford new ones, then get a quart of SLX Denatured Alcohol, pour into a large mason jar or tight seal rubbermaid tub, put your bass strings in there and soak overnight (two nights is best). Next day, take out – rub down – dry off, and put back on your bass. Keep the alcohol tightly covered or pour back into the canister. Keep away from flames, don’t breathe in, use gloves. This cleaning technique will restore your strings to 90% new sound.

Use Good Pluck Technique

Second, the way you pluck or pick the strings determines how many fundamental or harmonics are set into motion. The shorter the contact time between pick and string, the more harmonics are generated. Fingers with their wide contact points will give the most rounded and muffled tone unless they are calloused and rough.

For rock and metal, unless you are a pro with finger plucking, try using a pick. If you use a thin flexible pick like a Fender Medium will give the brightest, while a Jazz III pick will provide more bass but less mid/treble. Picking near the bridge is brighter but more twangy, near the neck boomier but floppy. Tortex picks are scratchy sounding and give a lot of bite and harmonic overtones, which assists with the piano tone.

There is a “secret” plucking technique that combines the thump of fingerstyle with the harmonics of a pick. To do this, slap and pluck in one motion. That is, keep the first finger joint (closest to the tip) relatively straight and slap the pad of your finger onto the string, 45 degrees toward the body, so that the string hits the fretboard, and add just a bit of pluck into it as you follow through and release the string. The two should happen almost simultaneously. It should sound very clacky from the string hitting the frets. Through overdrive or rolled down treble, the clack won’t be that bad. But like slap playing, you get more harmonics this way. It’s how you can play with fingers while still cutting through. Low action helps a lot with this. Many metal fingerstyle players use this method.

Keep Your Mids

Third, the actual piano timbre is all located in the mids and upper mids of your bass sound, in the 600-2500 Hz region. On the EQ, don’t scoop your upper mids or muffle all your trebles, you need them. A bass that sounds kind of middy by itself, may end up sounding very nice and defined in a mix with distorted guitars.

Process with Distortion

Easiest way to do this is use a Tech 21 Bass Driver or Hartke Bass Attack pedal. This gives a certain bass sound heard on many albums.

An alternative is to split the bass track into two copies and distort just one of those, then blend. That is, you record DI (directly into the software) first. Then duplicate the track. The first track will be your rounded full bottom, the second your harmonics.

Low pass your first track around 100 to 150 and compress the hell out of it. You want this to be an even tone (especially important for slower metal styles).

Compress and high pass the second track around 500 or higher, so that you get all the tin-canny harmonics from it, then run this through a guitar amp/cab simulator to give it a creamy to raspy (but not fizzy) distortion. You can add a stereo room verb to this as well, thus leaving the bottom bass track mono and the upper just stereo enough to not be boring.

Note: bridge and neck pickups may require different low pass and high pass points.

Then adjust the volume between both tracks to make it sound balanced, full, and defined. You can reduce the rounded track and increase the volume of the distorted track to create a leaner sound, or the opposite for a fuller sound.

In keeping them center panned, the bass remains distinct from the rhythm guitars, which themselves should be panned near full left and full right to create stereo spread and leave the center open for vocals, bass, kick, and snare.

You can send both tracks to a single buss, apply further compression to glue them together, and then some final polishing EQ. Even add some saturation if required.

By having the rounded bottom track, you create fullness to the whole package. And by having the distorted second bass track, the listener can make out the bass line. Since the distorted track is the same recording as the rounded track, the listener’s brain perceives both as one, and it sounds like a full yet distinct bass. The harmonics, accentuated by the guitar amp sim distortion, is what grabs the attention, while the rounded bottom remains in the background as a subliminal supporter of the fullness.

Can you just run one bass track through a guitar amp simulator? Well, the problem is that the distortion algorithm distorts the lower harmonics and fundamental frequency as well, leading to a farting sound. You don’t want a farty bass, but one with clean full bottoms and distorted high-definition highs, and the methods outlined in this article will get you there.

Get Different Pickups

Humbucking bass pickups have two coils in them whose signals combine. Because the coils are slightly apart, each will pick up vibrations from a slightly different part of the string. Because those parts don’t have exactly the same waveforms, some frequencies (certain harmonics) will cancel and some will sum together. The canceling of frequencies may lead to a kind of muted, muddled, or colored sound. This may be interfering with the piano tone. Hence by moving to a single coil pickup, that issue is avoided.

Precision and Jazz basses use pickups who, individually, don’t have a frequency canceling effect because each pickup only uses one coil per string. Hence you will retain more harmonics with those. For instance, EMG offers the 35PX and 35JX pickups, which are for 4 string basses with the 3.5” soapbar form factor. These have different sounds, but they will be clearer than an EMG 35DCX or 35CSX which are humbuckers. Thus putting an EMG 35JX in the neck will give a somewhat middy but very clear tone with lots of harmonics, whereas putting an EMG PX there will give a thumpier, more solid sound with slightly less harmonics but still more than a regular humbucking pickup.

Here’s a rough guide for what gauges you need for various lowered tunings:

E flat standard (1/2 step down) – 10 through 52

D standard (1 step down) – 10 through 54

C sharp standard (1 1/2 steps down) – 11 through 56

C standard (2 steps down) – 11/12 through 56

B standard (2 1/2 steps down) – 12 through 56

A standard – 13 through 58 or 60

The above ranges are chosen so that the plain strings are bendable without being so loose that you get intonation problems when fretting them, and that the wound strings are heavy enough to avoid fret buzzing.

You can use a 52 gauge all the way down to C sharp, though that’s getting a little floppy. It’s best in the E flat to D range. The advantage of having a 52 instead of 54 is that you get sharper attack. The 54, in being fatter, takes longer for the pick to travel over it, thus it has a more rounded tone. You get more low end, but sacrifice top end, and the crisp attack is actually what makes a metal chug sound heavy, thus for C sharp, sometimes a 52 is better than a 54, though it may require higher action to avoid fret buzz.

A 10 gauge will go down to D before becoming too loose, while 12 gauge is slightly stiff at C standard and an 11 may be preferred there for easier bending.

For D and lower, I recommend using a wound 3rd (“G”) string instead of plain. Reason being that a plain string in the 20+ gauge range is like a stiff metallic rod that emits a bad “howl” effect, sounds like vibrato but it’s internal disharmony from longitudinal vibrations within the string. Wound 3rd eliminates that problem. Since wound is more flexible than same gauge plain, go up 2-3 gauges with the wound. So if a set calls for 18p, then a 20w or 21w will work well in that position, and 22p is well replaced with a 24w. Power chords involving the 3rd string will sound a LOT better with it being wound.

Tips:

Ernie Ball makes Light Gauge (2208) and Medium Gauge (2206) sets that come with wound 3rds. This is the most convenient and economical option for D to C tunings.

GHS makes an odd-gauge set 11-53 (GB-LOW) which is great for the D/C# range. Needs wound 3rd, though.

D’Addario’s Light Top Heavy Bottom (EXL140) are excellent for E flat standard. The 17p string is just thin enough to pass, although a 19w is better.

D’Addario’s light Jazz strings (EJ21) are good for C#/C but need the 52 gauge replaced by a 54. They come with wound 3rds.

You can buy D’Addario and Ernie Ball single gauge strings by the pack. Ernie Balls come in 3-packs for 3-4 dollars, D’Addario in 5 packs for 7-8 dollars.

As for Ernie Ball vs D’Addario, Ernie Balls are brighter and cheaper but go dead sooner, but they have a better selection of gauges. D’Addario seems like a higher quality string, but the E or G string usually tends to need customization with a different gauge.

DR strings are among the greatest, but the roundwounds (Tite-Fit) will unravel if you don’t bend the wire just past the tuners, per instructions shown inside the packaging, meaning you can’t take them off and put them back on the guitar.

For bass, I think DR strings are the best (50-110s will handle C to E flat). The DR lo-riders are great for metal. They have a piano-like ringing tone to them and there is good balance between the strings. If you just want a boomy rounded bass without any treble or ringing or harmonics, then try for some flatwounds.

The debate boils down to this.

Windows

Windows is mainstream, runs on cheap hardware, and has great multitasking. Therefore it’s great for office and school work, gaming, and everyday use.

However, Windows computers too easily become slow over memory leaks, corrupted over registry issues, infected with viruses and trojans, and unstable when uninstallation of software also deletes critical files. It’s very common to have to reinstall the operating system periodically.

In other words, Windows is far from hassle or maintenance free, and those who don’t know computers, who therefore neglect maintenance or common sense protection, will find their computers useless in short time. I’m talking about technophobic moms and grannies. Then they have to pay someone to fix it.

Therefore, in the hands of inexperienced users, Windows computers may be cheaper to buy, but they cost more to maintain. That is, unless you happen to be their son or good friend then you’re obligated to spend hours on their crappy windows machine fixing it for free.

Linux

Linux is free and also runs great on cheap hardware, and overall is more stable than Windows. But you have to be good with computers and familiar with the command line to customize, optimize, and securitize it into being as productive an environment as Windows or OS X.

Otherwise, inexperienced users will be heavily limited by the dearth and shoddiness of the basic applications available via one-click-installation. I’m talking about Ubuntu Linux here. The other Linux distros aren’t suitable for inexperienced users at all.

Thus Linux is suitable for only two types of people: programmer types who enjoy the fruits of hours of command-line tweaking and optimization, and inexperienced users who don’t need much beyond a few basic generic apps available via the one-click installer. If you need specialized software for audio, video, or graphics production then you’re out of luck; Linux offerings in those areas simply aren’t as slick, capable, or accepting of third party plugins as Windows and Mac software.

Windows users who think they can just switch over to Linux and do as much as easily, will be disappointed. Work is required to get there, and that’s not something that will fly with mom or grandpa or the average users who gets frustrated with having to dig around the guts of their operating system. But if they have a friend or relative who loves that kind of work, and if they don’t need to do much with their computers, then a Linux system would suit them fine.

OS X

Out of the box, Apple’s OS X is more stable and secure than Windows, easier to use than Linux, relatively maintenance free, and has better visual design than both. It’s meant for people who just want a computer that works day after day, smoothly, quickly, efficiently, and quietly, with minimal time spent on setup, tweaking, and maintenance.

On the downside, it’s not as customizable as Windows or Linux. Also, it only runs on Apple hardware, which is expensive. It can indeed be unofficially installed on certain PC systems, but at the cost of many hours spent on command line configuration, driver hunting, patching, and then the possibility of missing functions like wake-from-sleep or ethernet/wireless connectivity, and the risk of everything going up in flames (figuratively) when you install an OS update that breaks everything for which no patches are yet available. It’s risky and a hassle.

OS X is therefore ideal for those who don’t mind spending extra for a slicker and easier computing experience. There are a few things Windows does way better than OS X, mainly multitasking. The taskbar in Windows is superior to the Dock/Expose/Mission-Control system in OS X; true to its name, in Windows it takes fewer thoughts and clicks or keystroke combinations to identify a window and move to it. It sucks having ten text files open and five tabs loaded in a single browser, and hitting the Expose key and having to hunt for what you need.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if I were a mainstream user on a budget or a gamer running the latest hardware, I would stick with Windows. If I were a programmer who enjoys tweaking my computer into a finely honed machine, I would choose Linux. And if I just wanted to use my computer without having to screw with it all the time to keep it running, and if I could afford it, I would choose OS X. Each has their advantages.

Myself, I have chosen OS X because for writing, graphic design, music production, and internet research it is ideal. My Mac Mini computer never has to be shut down or restarted except when updating the operating system (uptime of months), wakes instantly from sleep, doesn’t slow down if not restarted for a while, doesn’t get viruses, works problem-free with my audio recording peripherals, doesn’t have a corruptible registry, needs no defragging, and only rarely requires downloading drivers since most are built in. Its my reliable “don’t have to mess with it” computer. And it only consumes 25 watts for a desktop and is the size of a book.

But my Mac would not be suitable for really heavy processor-intensive work like time-constrained software compiling, heavy video editing, or cutting edge gaming. For that, one would be better off spending the cash on the high power innards of a PC desktop and forego the icing on the cake delivered by OS X.