I am struggling to find the desired tone from my guitar and amp. help.

[Sayonil Mitra]

First my gear:
Fender Strat (8 yrs old, 3 single coil pickups)
Boss ME25 processor
VOX pathfinder amp

I am a massive massive fan of huge, wide rhythm guitar tones, tones which absolutely crush anything it sees under its synyster weight. For example,
Rhythm tone from songs Hail to the King and Pain (3 days grace). I need that tone or tones like those because when I am writing songs, those tones alone fuel so many ideas. I watched a lot of YT videos but failed to apply those. Are those tones so massive only due to pre-amp and amp settings? OR there is some crazy mixing/mastering technique that I don't know?
(I cant upload the sample of what i am getting unfortunately. it says mp3, wav are not supported formats)
Here's the song Pain:-
(quite a crazy playlist imo)

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Are you using the me 25 for distortion or clean tone and everything? I only use my me 25 for distortion.

 

[Nocturne]

For me, a tone like this means a fair amount of distorsion and a lot of mids, try to play with your amp settings to nail that. But I'm afraid that it will be hard for you to get such a massive tone without a humbucker pickup, single coils struggle to do a clean, heavy tone with distorsion

 

[Ed Seith]

Your biggest problem is going to be the single coil pickup in that bridge. Fat, wide crushing tones come from humbuckers. And, despite what a lot of people think, well-balanced mid-range tuning on the amp. Dime was a huge fan of scooping all the mids, but his tone on its own was pretty thin.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

Are you using the me 25 for distortion or clean tone and everything? I only use my me 25 for distortion.

same. only for distortion. i am also trying virtual plugins like emissary and nadir from Ignite amps

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

Your biggest problem is going to be the single coil pickup in that bridge. Fat, wide crushing tones come from humbuckers. And, despite what a lot of people think, well-balanced mid-range tuning on the amp. Dime was a huge fan of scooping all the mids, but his tone on its own was pretty thin.

Ok. I thought those pickups maybe a reason. was not too sure

 

[Ed Seith]

Listen to some Kings-X to hear about the heaviest tone you're going to get out of single coils.

 

[Andrew Milner]

As someone who has struggled quite a bit with this issue at the beginning of this year, here's what I did. But before we begin, my setup is like this:

- Washburn guitar with two humbucker pickups
- Line 6 Spider Classic 15 amp

I basically tuned the Bass, Mid and Treble knobs to 12 o'clock. And then started fiddling around with each one. You don't want too many bass frequencies in there though, because it tends to make your sound a bit muddy. At least that's how I perceive it. The trick, as Ed said, is in the mids and I would argue in the highs as well. My ideal sound was with the mids kept ad 12 o'clock and the highs turned at 3 o'clock. Bear in mind that I had to cut a lot of the highs in the mix though.

Also worth noting is that the amount of gain you put in there. Overdoing it will make your sound way too fuzzy. And no amount of high-frequency cutting will save it.

As for pickups, I usually use the bridge pickup for rhythm and the neck pickup for the lead parts. I lived my entire life thinking it's the other way around until I talked to my friend who is teaching me how to sing and told me that it is not. This, however, is all up to you.

Emissary and NadIR is also a good starting place. What I didn't like about this is that I seemed incapable of finding an impulse response that gave me a sound as good as my amp does. But there a lot of options there, so you could keep searching in that direction.

Here is a good video to get you started with those Emissary and NadIR VSTs:

 

[Calvin Phillips]

You can use bridge or the neck pick ups for lead or rhythm. One just comes off a bit cleaner the the other. People use neck cause it hides their mistakes better. If you shred on the bridge you'll look a lot cooler then the neck lol.

 

[Bellah83]

As someone who has struggled quite a bit with this issue at the beginning of this year, here's what I did. But before we begin, my setup is like this:

- Washburn guitar with two humbucker pickups
- Line 6 Spider Classic 15 amp

I basically tuned the Bass, Mid and Treble knobs to 12 o'clock. And then started fiddling around with each one. You don't want too many bass frequencies in there though, because it tends to make your sound a bit muddy. At least that's how I perceive it. The trick, as Ed said, is in the mids and I would argue in the highs as well. My ideal sound was with the mids kept ad 12 o'clock and the highs turned at 3 o'clock. Bear in mind that I had to cut a lot of the highs in the mix though.

Also worth noting is that the amount of gain you put in there. Overdoing it will make your sound way too fuzzy. And no amount of high-frequency cutting will save it.

As for pickups, I usually use the bridge pickup for rhythm and the neck pickup for the lead parts. I lived my entire life thinking it's the other way around until I talked to my friend who is teaching me how to sing and told me that it is not. This, however, is all up to you.

Emissary and NadIR is also a good starting place. What I didn't like about this is that I seemed incapable of finding an impulse response that gave me a sound as good as my amp does. But there a lot of options there, so you could keep searching in that direction.

Here is a good video to get you started with those Emissary and NadIR VSTs:

Man, I thought the same thing about pickup selection for the longest time. It was my LP with the rhythm label right there on the switch. It wasn't until I saw a vid of Syn mentioning most of his solos were played on the sustaniac that I finally realized, and then started noticing Dime, Zakk and a lot of others all switched to the neck pickup for shredding too.

 

[Ed Seith]

Yeah, those markings on the Les Paul are from a pre-saturation era when jazz men played them with clean tones all the time.

 

[Andrew Milner]

You can use bridge or the neck pick ups for lead or rhythm. One just comes off a bit cleaner the other. People use neck cause it hides their mistakes better. If you shred on the bridge you'll look a lot cooler then the neck lol.

Yeah, I agree with that . You mess up on the bridge, everyone and their mothers will notice. Maybe I'll try recording some stuff with them inversed. I kind of like the feel of my neck pickup for rhythm. It makes the guitar sound...fuller.

 

[Bellah83]

Yeah, those markings on the Les Paul are from a pre-saturation era when jazz men played them with clean tones all the time.

That's another thing I realized with tone guides. Or amp demos. Its really hard to find guides specific to modern metal. My dad is a blues guy and always gave me tips that ended up being pretty contradictory to what I was looking for with hard rock or metal.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Yeah, I agree with that . You mess up on the bridge, everyone and their mothers will notice. Maybe I'll try recording some stuff with them inversed. I kind of like the feel of my neck pickup for rhythm. It makes the guitar sound...fuller.

I personally like the neck pick up for a poppier catchy riff over the bridge.. where it's more in your face and rock and roll like. I guess it's all.in what you want the song to sound like. Sometimes I use both pick ups in my recordings sometimed I pick and choose.