What type for guitar is better used for heavy metal?
soccasupersta asked:
I have been debating this question and I need some help. Are certain brands and makes better for one genre of music? Like fender for blues, or ESP for heavy? (don’t know, just using those as examples) If so, what is a good guitar? I heard ESP is a good brand, maybe Ibanez….what do you suggest?
I have been debating this question and I need some help. Are certain brands and makes better for one genre of music? Like fender for blues, or ESP for heavy? (don’t know, just using those as examples) If so, what is a good guitar? I heard ESP is a good brand, maybe Ibanez….what do you suggest?
Ibanez are still the world’s leading Metal instrument company.
They bring out a new guitar designed to be heavier and more powerful in that genre almost every year, and many of their guitars feature the pickups and settings that would be wasted on other genres.
Ibanez brought out the 7-string for one reason - to rock harder, haha!
ESP are ok - pretty much just a Gibson rip-off company though. Metallica use ESPs, as do many other metal bands, but Ibanez is the most commonly used make.
First of all it’s not the guitar that makes the music it is YOU, so whatever brand you choose does not really matter. But like you said FENDER, GIBSON as used by Slash, IBANEZ as used by Steve Vai, little known company CARVIN, KRAMER. The list goes on and on. You pick the right one for you.
I would recommend Flamenco, they are great with heavy metal. they tell you some stuff about choosing guitars.
this site tells you about the Flamenco guitar.
good luck.
I’ve heard great heavy metal tones made from a wide variety of guitars - Strats, Les Paul knock-offs, Explorers, Semi-hollowbodies, you name it, it can be done and probably has.
The criteria for choosing a good guitar are as follows:
Does it feel good to you? Does it fit your hands? Different neck styles will feel radically different sometimes, and sometimes fret size will make a difference. This is the most important qualification. If it works for you, it’s good.
Second - how good is the wood? Denser woods give you more sustain, which is important in heavier styles of music. It’s not critical, but in general denser woods are preferred over lighter woods for modern detuned heavy metal. This is sooo not a rule, though, and this is nowhere near as important as feel and electronics…
Third - electronics. Really, you probably should swap out your stock pickups and put better pickups into whatever guitar you end up buying, unless it’s really really expensive or something. Try to select a pickup with high output and *less* bass response, to offset the bassier tone that your denser wood body will provide. You want a moderately balanced tone, you don’t want to have a farty bassy signal, as that just leads to mud.
Finally, as long as you have high output pickups, the guitar isn’t nearly as important as the amp and speakers. A high-gain tube amp with decent speakers will turn any guitar with higher output pickups into an acceptable metal axe.
I guess what i’m saying is that it’s not as important to focus on the brand name as it is to focus on the feel, the wood, and the electronics, in approximately that order. If a cheaper guitar feels better than the expensive one, buy the cheaper one!
I’ve been playing LTD now for a while, cuz I found the neck fits my hands better than the Jackson Dinky I was playing, and I couldn’t be happier. Swap out the pickups for higher output humbuckers (Seymour Duncan JB’s, in my case), and you’re good to go.
Last note: remember how I said bass is mud? Trust me on this. Get an EQ pedal and turn down your bass frequencies before your signal hits the amp (cut somewhere below 300 Hz to start). You will benefit immediately with more clarity and less mud. You can always dial in more bass with your amp, but the bass will actually feel like “warmth” instead of fart.
My heavy tone is like how Kerry King (Slayer) does it - I cut bass before it gets to the amp, and on the amp I turn mids up all the way, with just enough bass to get some warmth, and enough treble and presence to get that crisp feel back. My tone instantly got a lot fuller and crunchier when I did this - your guitars’ volume all comes from your mids, after all.
Good luck!
Saul