You can get massive sounding guitars many different ways, bass is a big ones yes you are correct. The way I have always done it is by quad tracking and taking 1 set and panning them 80 percent, take the next set and do 20-30. Granted quad tracking is a pain in the ass however it will give you this massive wall of sound that just hits you especially when you go to mix it. Trust me it works. Not sure if Glen is willing to back me on this or not but I always quad track in stereo due to his advise and it has helped me get a super massive sound. Oh and please for the love of God don't multi track record, it doesn't work it will all sound like it's still in the center of your phones.
I can’t seem to get the bass to translate from my monitors to other speakers. I end up with way to much bass in the mix and I use bass guitar libraries. I do have some acoustic panels set up in the studio which I though would help.
What I'm missing from this video is an accurate explanation of *why* this works so much better than anything else. Sure, endorsing a good product is fine. But maybe digging a little deeper would give people the information they need to replicate the effect for even less money.
Awesome tutorial as always, Glenn. Love the top end on the Tegeler EQP1. :D Thank you ever so much for reminding me of that legendary Klark review. I never laughed more at a gear review in my life!
I would like to mention that Ignite Amps has a Pultec Eq plugin called the PTEq-X. It sounds great and is 100% absolutely free. It's been living on my drum buss for years.
For Reaper users , Tukan makes some good Pultec EQ's. For Other DAW's Ignite Amps makes a pretty good free Pultec too. That 30Hz boost/cut trick is cool on guitars.
Glen, I just want you to know, your videos have helped me get through so many rough times in my life. When things take a turn for the worst, I always find happiness watching your videos. They are always funny and put a smile on my face. That’s all
The first time I heard Passion and Warfare, I was blown away, not just by Steve Vai’s playing, but the CD sounded better than any CD I heard up to that time.
It's nice that it's much more within reach for the mixers, but I really like that you show us what your doing with it as well. That way we can at least emulate it with current gear/plugins we have.
I just tried this trick today on a new single im working on (don't have a hardware unit but I tried it in Reaper with the Tukan Studios EQT-2KAN Pultec plugin) and it was exactly what my guitars needed to pop out in the mix and not get buried behind the bass and kick drum! Thanks for this Glen! 🤘😁🤘
Glenn!!! thank so much for this, is great to see the tools than can create something like that, even if they are a bit out of reach for a lot of us, with videos like this we know what we can aim for in terms of sound and if possible hardware, cheers man!
The Tegeler Creme tube EQ section looks pretty nice too. The high band and the low band are the real secret sauce, and a VCA buss compressor is always useful.
Very impressive sounds and a great demo of quite how extreme the settings can be on these beasts without harshness. Very minor point of pedantry: the high boost is always a bell, albeit sometimes a very wide one, but it isn't a shelf. I DIYed a stereo pair of these, along with a pair of MEQ5s that are all about midrange. Why does that design get so little love on guitar, I wonder?
3:30 Oh no please, don't waste some useable things like that... The ground could maybe host some plants, now it's polluted with KT crap, Jeez Glenn... Jokes aside, thanks for the tips !
A paramteric EQ is an absolute must in any recording environment. Learning the difference between what the adjustments do on a parametric and a graphic EQ is paramount. I even still keep a parametric in my live rig. It's an old Rocktron Pro-Q, but it works for a live situation. My main rig is an Axe-FX, but there is an analog guitar amp in the rig that has the Pro-Q in loop and at the ready in case the Axe takes a dump.
I listen to RU-vid on a complete higher end home stereo system with a powered sub fed from my PC with a fairly decent sound card...holy fuck Glenn your mixes are stuff of legend! Sound so big and proud...I like it!
Wow! Great vid and examples. Glenn, can you please do a follow up of what you did for the bass in these same exact song examples. The guitars sound amazing, and now seeing what you did to make them work so perfectly with the bass is your real secret sauce! Thanks again Glenn!
@@SpectreSoundStudios I’ve been playing for around 10 years and it’s honestly beat every guitar I owned I am super suprised how well it stays in tune and the playability on it and it’s super badass looking w the color changing paint!
i'd ask about Latency/Phasing issues between the software & Hardware processors; but it's an Analog Eq ... precise phase shifting is kinda key to the sound. i don't expect a *bypass* Null test; just wondering how good Analog Inserts are from one DAW to the next. also, if it's a fixed recipe , why not do it when Tracking , before going into Digital ? too big a commitment ? yes, it does sound Massive, btw. congrats !
When i were a lad we had a pultec eq at the studio i had access to. Got some of the best bass sounds ever using that as my preamp. I was rather shocked a few years later when I tried to buy one for myself (and it cost more than twice my car). I've been chasing that sound ever since.
Nice! I do the same type of EQ moves on my mixes, but I will often use API to do the mids and neve for the high end stuff. That being said, the pultec/tegler sounds great as well, i sometimes use the 30hz trick. But always end up with API 560 i feel like it can give more ‘bite’ on subtle boosts in some areas and it can still carve out the low mids i dont’ want. Nice Euro Trip reference at the end too! “In BERLIN”😂. Such an underrated movie.
All these plugins do the Pultec trick, hope some of you find it useful: Analog Obsession Rare, RareSE, and FrankCS, Boz Digital Bark of Dog, Variety of Sound FlavourMTC, Audio Assault IQ505, Ignite Amps PTEq-X, TDR SlickEQ GE, Dead Duck Software DD Channel and DD Equalizer, and Purafied Audio VU Compressor if you max out the low end.
The more I watch your vids and the more I listen to my favorite records, the more i realize that i really don't need anything more than my laptop and interface. To my (not trained) ears, simplicity seems to be key. 2 tracks for my guitar, bass ran through a high gain amp, and good drum programs. I do punk/goth metal.
Steve Vai's Pultecs... he borrowed them from Frank Zappa while he was mixing Flexable and Flexable Leftovers... and asked the estate if he could keep them. Sounds massive.
Glenn, in one of your shows you mentioned cleaving low end on everything to eliminate low end clutter. Can you give us a thorough walk through of this process. I suffer from low end clutter. When I go in and start cleaving it from guitars etc my mic sounds worse …..
I’d recommend not going any higher than 80hz with your HPF, and adjusting the slope. You really want a little bit of low end in guitars because it makes them sound so much bigger, you just don’t want them blending with the bass in a way that sounds muddy. Your problem might also be in the low mids and not the actual low end, like see if there’s too much ~200hz in your drums, bass, and guitars that is building up. 500hz is another range that I take a lot out of drums pretty regularly, usually adds a lot of clarity to everything.
Interestingly enough, rap producers have been using this trick on 808 kicks for a couple decades now. Boost & cut the same frequency with a Pultech, no other EQ does it but it's like it takes away the bad stuff at that frequency and replaces it with pultech goodness
Fortunately, there are numerous software clones of The Pultec for those of us not so well heeled. :) The Waves PuigTec is my personal fave. But I have messed around with PTEq-X from Ignite/STL Tones. It's a freebie, but it sounds pretty dang good. In a mix, I'll be it would be hard to distinguish a difference.
This is one of the few things that I wish I had room for a physical version instead of the plugin. Really tuning the boost and attenuation is difficult with just one mouse cursor. I mean a midi controller works fine too, but man i reach for this type of EQ so often.
Hey Glenn. Great stuff... I was wondering what your thoughts were on the BBE Sonic Maximiser. I've used the same one since 1996 and made a huge improvement with my sound. I love it. What's your take?
Glenn, what do you think about Pultec clones without tube in 500 series modules, like Wes Audio _Prometheus ? I never tried original Pultec, only this one
Damn.. 0:50 I closed my eyes... and couldn't hear much of a difference!? (NS10s and headphones..) ... should I be worried about my hearing? [edit 6:17, ok THAT I can hear!]
It’s a pretty subtle difference, not extreme like the later examples. The rhythm guitars just get a little boost in clarity and become more apparent in the mix. You don’t need to get your hearing checked though haha
@Jake_Sachs I'm all in on warm audio mostly because of price. But I'm still in the middle of building my studio from the ground up (building included). I just hope I'm not disappointed with my decision
I love you Glen, but I gotta admit I got a stereo pair of the kts next to my chameleon labs gear 😂 I think you got a really bad qa unit but I tube swapped mine and they sound good now, but before swap mine sounded radically different than yours did. For tinkerers and modders the kts are nice to use as a platform to modify. Even if you just keep the enclosure and pots it's cheaper than a pultec reproduction empty enclosure you can put new guts in. The kt76 is the best of them and it's nearly inaudible to a friends mc77 isolated tracks. 2a is almost unusable without an optocell swap tho. I got the igs cell to swap in.
A question: I've worked with Audacity for some years (yeah, I know, I'm cheap - switched to Cakewalk recently as that's also freeware but much better in many ways) - and one thing it seems to be able to do better than anything else... is EQ. As in, you can literally set up your EXACT preferences on where to boost, where to cut, etc. I've never seen any other program offer that level of flexibility. So, is it worthwhile exporting tracks to Audacity to do the EQ stage? Or is there some form of issue with trying to do this?
My comment doesn't really fall under recording, so I don't really expect an answer or explanation, but I'm having an issue with playback. The issue is the vocalist is getting drowned out by the rest of the instruments. This is happening with actual songs like "Love?" from Strapping Young Lad, and I've spent hours with my computer's EQ and sound settings. I started to think my problem is my hardware. I'm using an older pair of BOSS headphones, and never really had an issue for years, till now. I'm just confused with the who situation haha.
You may be suffering Tarja syndrome. In Nightwish, the songwriter had to write around the frequencies the singer would sing so she wasn't buried. to find out, see what frequencies your vocalist is using, just murder-cut all the instruments at those frequencies. Then slowly bring them back in and see if that is the issue.
Sounds like you're missing some of the "mid" and getting more "side". First thing I'd check is that your headphones are plugged all the way in. Then, make sure any atmospheric effects on your computer are turned off (e.g. "spatializer" or "wide soundstage" or any other such nonsense). Those effects turn down the "mid" (where the vocals sit) and boost the "side" to make the soundstage seem wider. It boosts the difference between the two channels while suppressing what's the same between the two (but with a HPF so the bass isn't turned down). You might also try a different set of headphones to troubleshoot. Are you using your computer's internal soundcard/headphone jack on your laptop/etc? or an external interface?
@@SpectreSoundStudios thanks, later in the video I could tell a difference (not $4,000 worth of difference tho). The 1st sample sounded the same.........either way it still sounds killer.
@@DerSilvano I heard the effect and it does change the signal, but in a similar way as this hardware or plug in. But ears are funny and not everyone hears everything the same. I did manage to bypass the BBE SM fad though!
Mostly unrelated question. Can you ( or someone) recommend a course or resource for someone that is super dumbed down. I am completely blind walking into walls with the DAWs I have tried. (Reaper and Audacity of that matters) the "beginner" courses found for software are still beyond me.
I've been working in something I found interesting, what do you think about using a delay with 0 feedback that puts your main signal 100% on one side and the delay on the other side with only 13-15ms apart? I found it really cool while doing music with only one guitar
Analogue Obsession Rare, RareSE, and FrankCS, Boz Digital Bark of Dog, Variety of Sound FlavourMTC, Audio Assault IQ505, Ignite Amps PTEq-X, TDR SlickEQ GE, Dead Duck Software DD Channel and DD Equalizer, and Purafied Audio VU Compressor if you max out the low end.
Thanks for this video, but I'm noticing that this is another consecutive Monday without any mix reviews. I understand that you've been busy, but I'm starting to worry. I have a Fryette P-50-E that I put a screwdriver through AND have an Eminence DV77... that's on backorder... and (hopefully) I'll have a timeline on both by mid-week. But I'm planning on having you check my mixes so I can be better than I am now. Are the mix reviews coming back, or will I have to go to someone who doesn't wear Robotech shirts? Seriously, can you put up some links? Those shirts are awesome!
I hate to ask but for those of us who are definitely not 2-3k ready to execute on a hardware solution - do the software solutions come close to this level of quality. I do understand and am not naive enough to assume its at the same level of hardware, but relatively speaking, I am asking if anything can get close to the ballpark in 2023.
What about warm audio’s version that’s like $700? Any experience with that one? I always hear great things about their products and they’re usually reasonably priced.
@@SpectreSoundStudios Hey, thats still far cheaper then the real pultec! As long as its good quality and it does the thing, it seems like a reasonable alternative.
