Hi Milos, thank you for your comment. :) Great tips, and yes, TDR Nova works great for cleaning up guitars.

This tutorial is a real gem, a compilation of the key points which makes a difference. Very informative, yet sufficiently clear and simple. Thank you for publishing this.

I would add few things that might be usefull:

1. When building distortion, use few stages (just a start of a breakpoint of amp and a bit of boost on dist pedal and some more compression on compressor if needed) rather than max out distortion in one stage (amp or pedal). It enables sustaine while guitar voice remains clear and not fuzzy.

2. On digital equipment, like modeling processors, high/low cuts might be even more radical (140 hz – 7.000 Hz)

3. Dynamic EQ is a marvelous tool to find and cut nasty spots and make your guitar better fitting in the mix. TDR Nova is one of these.

Fantastic. Thanks Tomislav, look forward to it!

I am currently working on an article about free clippers – going live next week! :)

Billy Decker, mix engineer and the co-author of my book ‘Template Mixing and Mastering’ treats electric guitars exactly the same each time – he puts and EQ on with the same start curve (below) and then a clipper and limiter to make them big – that’s it!

EQ
+2.1 db 100hz shelf
+1.8 db 240hz parametric bell shape, medium Q
+4.5 db 7kHz shelf

Then adds a clipper plugin and a limiter to make it loud! That’s it. He’ll pan 100% left and 100% right and keep them dry a lot of the time or maybe add a touch of delay and reverb, nothing more – and he’s mixed 16 no.1 US singles! – that’s the sound on them.

Don’t know if Tomislav can recommend a free clipper (if there is one), plenty of great free EQ’s and Limiters.

Welcome, and thank you for the tip! Volume automation is a big one. Requires manual work, but provides fantastic results.

Newb here, but I can testify to the power of dynamically reducing the mids masking the vocals and volume automation!

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! Is there any other tutorial you’d like to see on BPB?

Hey, thank you so much! That’s wonderful to hear. More tutorials are in the works. If there’s any particular topic you’d like to see covered, feel free to ask here. Thank you for reading BPB!