3. Hearing Aid
A common problem with gain staging is when there isn’t enough signal coming from effects.
Sometimes guitarists will come in for sessions and turn their various pedals on. The volume becomes lower then when in bypass mode.
They may not notice when playing by themselves in a room, but by the time the band kicks in, the difference is very noticeable. It’s as if their sound disappears when the pedals are kicked on.
The reason is overdrive pedals compress the sound. They bring up the overall sound but limit the peaks. The overall sound might seem the same, but the transients may still be louder on the clean sound.
This is going to be important if you’re recording bands live in the studio. You don’t want the quality of sound jumping all over the place from poor gain staging.
Hitting an amp with too little signal (unless you’re rolling off with your volume knob) usually results in a sound that is muddy and has less character. There is something dead about it. It does take a while to get a feel for matching signals. Your ears will play tricks on you.
Always check your meters from when an effect is on and off. Take consideration into whether your signal path is analog or digital.
4. Piggy Back
Effects can do some unpredictable things when you mess with gain. Try sending a hot signal to some analog effects and see what happens.
Fuzz pedals can do some weird ring modulation type effects when given too little gain. Again, you have to be aware of what is digital in your signal chain (keep saying that over and over). You may even have to move effects around to keep the digital effects out of the line of fire.
Old analog phasers can sound cool overdriven. Using two compressors in a series can be awesome too. Who doesn’t like some compressor on compressor action? Don’t tell me you audio geeks haven’t thought about it!
Use the first compressor mostly as a gain device. Slam the output of Comp 1 into the input of Comp 2. This is how they got the guitar sound on “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. They used two 1176 compressors in series. No guitar amps used.
You can use these principles with any effects. Spring reverbs? Analog delays? Analog chorus? Just remember, it’s rare when you want the signal lower than when going in. Only for a special effect.
Now, go get freaky with signal flow.
Mark Marshall is a producer, songwriter, session musician and instructor based in NYC.
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