There a few key factors to making an extremely distored guitar sound good. In this first of three parts, I'll try and cover all the factors to make your guitar sound the way it should. I'm going to break it down by parts of the signal chain, so today we'll cover your guitar itself, next time we'll do amps, and the final installment will be pedals and rack gear. Lets start with...
Body Construction:
The way a guitar is built has a huge impact on how it sounds. A lot of people seem to think that the tone of an electric guitar is just the product of pickups and amplifiers. In reality, every factor of a guitar impacts the end result, including the type of wood, neck joint, and type of finish. These are not as drastic as electronics, but every little thing adds up in the end.
Lets start with tone woods. The impact of wood is fairly minimal with heavy tone, so I'll save the in depth tone wood conversation for another post. The important thing is you want to find a wood that has a full, balanced tone and sustains well. Mahogany is a great choice, thats what you would see on most Gibson guitars. Other common woods are alder, ash and basswood amongst others. I would kind of avoid ash guitars for metal sounds, they tend to weigh a ton and you kind of miss the tonal upside when you've got the gain on 11.
A more important factor is body construction. You see a neck attached in three different ways: bolt on, set neck, and neck through. Each of these has different tone properties. Bolt on guitars tend to have a little bit more treble to them, an almost popping attack when you pick notes. The strat weirdos of the world refer to this as "quack." The plus side is you get a kind of compressed sound with fast runs and some cool dynamics. Another advantage is the fact that the neck is removable. This makes some adjustments available that aren't there with a set neck. The negative is bolts don't sustain quite as well as other designs. A set neck is similar to a bolt on, except the neck is glued in to the body instead of bolted on. This increases sustain and makes a more resonant guitar. One disadvantage to this is occasionally set neck guitars will have a bulky neck joint, making it difficult to shred the upper frets. A neck through is when the wood used for the neck actually continues through the entire guitar and the body consists of wings glued on to the sides. I am a huge fan of neck through guitars. They are really resonant, sustain great, and are structurally sound. They also alleviate the neck joint problem of set necks; Since the neck continues throughout the body there really is no structural issue with the joint, allowing it to be lowered and blended into the body. All designs have their own advantages, as always try a bunch of them out and see what works best for you.
The last real structural issue is the type of finish. Like tone woods, this is a somewhat minor factor for heavy tone. Just keep this rule of thumb in mind: The thinner the finish, the more resonant the guitar is. Usually cheaper guitars use a thick polyurethane that stifles the guitar's resonance. Nicer guitars will use lacquer finishes that gloss just as nice but are much thinner and breathe better. Like I said, this shouldn't be you're top concern, but its nice to be aware.
Hardware and Electronics:
Next lets talk about bridge systems. Floating tremolos like a floyd rose are a lot of fun, but realize that they are tone killers. When you have a bridge that doesn't contact the body, you loose basically all the tone properties and sustain of the wood. The other issue is it changes the sound of palm mutes. Also, remember tremolos are kind of a pain in the ass, they take a long time to tune and if not properly set up can have trouble staying there. Of course the upside is nothing is as cool as dropping a huge dive bomb with that whammy. A hard tail is a simpler and better sounding alternative, but realize you can never live your dream of learning the solo to "Angel of Death." Keep in mind that hard tail bridges strung through the body tend to sustain better as well. Another thought that people don't consider is that some bridges are easier to pick fast with. Gibson style tune o matics are much harder to fast pick on than a flat telecaster style bridge. Once again, see whats comfortable to your hand and try out as many designs as possible.
Ok, we've made it to the big one, pickups and wiring. Pickups are a huge component in you're final sound. There are two main categories here, active and passive. Active pickups are a great, simple way to go. They use a 9v battery and a preamp to shape the tone on the guitar for you, making it really simple to get a good, powerful tone. If you go with an active pickup however, you can throw away the rest of this post because the sound of the pickup will overpower the sound of the guitar itself. You can put an EMG 81 in a hundred dollar guitar and make it sound like a thousand dollar guitar with an EMG. Thats cool if your guitar is cheap, but if you put a ton of money into a nice resonant guitar with a lacquer finish, your selling yourself short a little bit. They do sound great on tremolo guitars though, the sound of the pickup compensates for a lot of the sound the floating bridge loses. My favorite active sets are Emg 81 and 85 and the Duncan Blackouts.
Passive pickups are the most common kind of pickups you see in a guitar. Instead of a preamp and battery, they work via simple magnets. Because of this, the type of magnet used in the pickup is a big factor in its tone. I'm sure when shopping for pickups you've seen the word Alnico a few times. Alnico magnets are very powerful and are usually seen in classic style (paf) pickups. These will give you a warm, thick tone. The downside is pickups like these can be somewhat unfocused and muddy with too much gain. Thats why most high gain pickups use a ceramic magnet. Most Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio high gain models use these. Ceramics have better clarity and tend to have that palm muting chunk we all covet. A few ceramic pickups I've used over the years that I've really enjoyed include the Dimarzio Super Distortion, Dimarzio Evolution, Duncan JB, and Gibson 500T (thats what I currently have). One thing to avoid with high output pickups are the gimmicky, super powered pickups like the Duncan Dimebucker and Invader. These guys use overpowered magnets with extra windings, and although they provide an absurd amount of gain, they get very thin and lose a tone of low end and mids. No low end and mids, your guitar doesn't cut. If you think the blade designs like the Dimebucker are cool, try the Dimarzio D-sonic or X2N (the X2Ns are a little too much for me, but I know guys who've sworn by them for years and years).
Last but not least, lets talk about a few small wiring mods that will help open up your guitar a little bit. Heres my simple summary of how a guitar works: When you strum a note, the pickup converts the sound to a electric signal, which then flows through the switch, volume pot, tone pot, then to the output jack (in most cases). As with any electronic signal, the farther it has to travel the more the signal degrades. Also, pots on a guitar are essentially gates, the volume gating the entire signal and the tone gating your high frequencies. A great question to ask yourself is "how often do I use my tone knob?" If you're like me, you just turn the volume and tone up all the way and rock out. If you do this, a great thing to do is remove the tone pot from the signal chain. Just solder off the capacitor and connecting wires to the tone pot or get your local guitar tech to do it. If you do use your tone pot, try replacing it with a higher value pot like a 1meg for a similar result. This will really open up your sound and get you a little more clarity. Another thing to look at is your pickup height. For playing metal, it helps to have your pickup slightly closer to the strings then normal. The key word here is slightly! If you move them too close your goning to get feedback and all sorts of unwanted noise.
So ends the guitar portion of heavy metal tone, next time we'll do amps! If you have any questions, want recommendations, or have any ideas for future content, email me at lowegutiarrepair@gmail.com
