Originally Posted by Doug Young
It's not a hard and fast rule, I just know that in general, it's not something I've ended up needing, most of the time for my recordings. If I need it, I'll certainly use it. It comes up more when I'm mixing more than just solo guitar. But I generally taking needing a lot of surgical EQ as a sign that I didn't record well to start with. I do use some "tone shaping" plugins, like the UAD tape simulator, and lately the "soothe2" plugin, which subtly affect the sound but in ways that I wouldn't know how to achieve with just EQ. Those are more "mastering" kinds of things. If I have a track mastered by someone else, of course, I have no idea what they do - maybe they EQ my tracks a lot! I don't think so, tho.
I also tend to use 2 pairs of mics with different characters, and I can blend them to get different sounds, so in that way I have a different type of "tone" control. For a long time, I used an AEA R88 ribbon mic along with a pair of condensers. The R88 is almost like bringing in a lower octave, so if I want more warmth, I'd use more R88, if it's muddy, I'd use less. Lately, I've been using a Townsend L22 as a 2nd mic "pair" (it's a stereo mic). It's unique in that it models lots of mics, so I can bring in a large diaphragm mic, or a ribbon. What I've actually found most useful is that I can vary the proximity effect and the mic's polar pattern during playback. So if my main sound is a pair of condensers, then I can mix the L22 in at any level, maybe very low, maybe higher, and can virtually adjust the mic position as well as the type of mic to affect the tone (subtly). I've used the L22 alone and its controls give a lot of power to shape the tone, basically by mic choice and position changes, but you can do it after the fact, which is pretty cool. But mostly I have just been using it in conjunction with a pair of spaced condensers, which makes the Townsend a more subtle add-in rather than the main sound.
Aside from that, my approach to dialing in a sound is pretty much just to listen, and see if I like the sound. If not, I move things. Moving the mics closer gets more bass, wider gets a more spacious sound, and so on. You can try to monitor thru headphones as you move the mics to find the best sound, but I usually find that misleading, so I just do it the tedious way - record, listen back, move mics, repeat... But at this point, other than periodic fits of wanting to experiment, I pretty much have setups that work, I have the mics set up all the time, and I can just sit down, hit record and play, and most of the time it's fine. When I do videos, I'm pretty casual about it. I've been using the AT4050 stereo mic, and I know I can just put it more of less in front of the guitar a foot or so out, check the stereo balance, and it will sound fine. Video tends to be a little more forgiving...
Mostly just by ear. if I hear a boomy bass note for example - probably the most common issue - I can look at the spectrum and see the graph jump when I hear it, and I can just click on that frequency and adjust till it tames the note. Ozone's mastering assistant is hit or miss, but it can be a starting point. My biggest concern with it is that's only analyzing a few seconds of your recording - it's not like it's scanning the whole track to find that one boomy note. I haven't spent enough time with FabFilter yet, but I think it also has some tools for pointing out potential peaks.
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