Review: Fender Mustang GTX50

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a combo amp which came out in 2020, but that actually is (along with the LT50) the latest iteration of Fender's take on digital combos, with presets, amp simulators, effects etc all in the box, all at an affordable price: the Mustang GTX50.

The Mustang serie is the low price digital serie of amps produced by Fender and aimed to the beginners, and even if I don't remember the year the first amp of this serie was produced, I think it was 2010 max, I know several updated versions have been put in the market, and this GTX keeps on building on top of the original one.

In 2020 Fender proposed 2 versions of the Mustang: the LT ones, (25 and 50w), which cost around 100$ less than the GTX and offer a stripped down software with less editing possibilities and it's aimed to the beginner guitarists and the GTX one, which offers a full range of in-depth parameter editing, and many more presets and tools to carve your sound.

I had the chance of trying the GTX (unfortunately without using the app Fender TONE, which is new for this version and allows the player to edit the presets and download new ones from the cloud), and I must say I have been impressed by the amount of bells and whistles this small amp features: bluetooth, fx loop, lcd color screen, 200 presets, usb to turn the amp into an audio interface, aux, headphone out, wi-fi, Celestion speaker and so on, plus the design is quite cute.

How does it sound? Well, it depends on the genre you need: if you like the typical Fender cleans, which are ringing, chimey, with emphasis on the high frequencies, this amp is quite good in recreating them. Moving towards more crunch territories though, the amp starts showing its flaws, which makes it (and its previous iterations) more similar to the Line6 Spider: the distortions sound quite digital, meaning compressed, scooped, scratchy, and the higher the gain, the more the problem is noticeable.

The conclusion is that this is a good bang for the buck if you like clean tones or slightly overdriven, but if you're looking for high gain simulations, there are much better candidates around, for example the Boss Katana or the Blackstar ones, unless you are in for a long and deep tone editing session.

Thumbs down!

Specs taken from the website:

- New models include: Fender classics like the Blues Jr and Vibro King, as well as other amplifers including JC Clean and Silver Jubilee

- New effects include: Models of classic Overdrive, Fuzz, Delay and Pitch Shift effects

- Newly-designed stage-ready cabinet and cosmetics

- 12-inch Celestion® guitar speaker

- 200 onboard user presets that can be modified for any style of music

- All-new Fender TONE 3.0 for iOS and Android for deep editing, preset browsing from the Fender Tone community, preset back-up and restore, and more

- Upgraded seven-button footswitch (optional) features individual bank up and down functions and easy effects selection, as well as a tap tempo and 60-second looper

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Sidechain EQ: what it is and when to use it

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

This time we're going to use sidechain in a different way than the most common one, the sidechain compression that we have already covered in this article: we're going to see what happens when applying the sidechain to an equalization.

With the term "sidechain" we define an interdependence between a trigger event (for example a kick hit) and an effect (usually a compressor that lowers the volume of another track for few instants), for instance in a song in which there is a synth pad, every time a kick hits, a sidechain compressor could lower the pad volume creating an artistic "vacuum" effect on the synth, like in the min. 1.43 of the song "Follow me" by Muse.

The "ducking" effect (that's how it's called), it's a creative choice that's functional to the arrangement of the song, but there are other instances in which a mix engineer would simply need to carve a little bit of room and avoid frequency masking in a very dense mix (for example one that is very fast or with many layers) without producing an effect that would take the attention of the listener away from the arrangement.

In this case, more than a compressor that would affect the whole tone, it's better to use an equalizer or a multiband compressor, because in this case one could clear a little bit of space just in the exact area in which we want for example our kick drum to cut the mix more clearly, without touching anything else.

How do we do it? In the Studio One interface (but surely it's very similar also in all the other DAWs) we need to load the eq or the multiband compressor in the insert of the track we want to affect (usually synths or bass guitar, but it could be really anything) and click on the sidechain button on top (as in the picture in this article), then in the track that should trigger the effect (for example the kick track) we click on the "+" button next to "sends" and there we'll see a menu with all the effects with the sidechain function active.
From there is sufficient to choose the eq or multiband compressor we've loaded on the other track and every time there will be a sound in this "trigger track", the eq or multiband compressor will activate simultaneously in the other, and in this case it will lower the eq in the other track, in the area of our choice, which should be the same that we want to emphasize in our "trigger" track;
for example if the kick track we are using is covered by the bass in the low end, for example in the 100hz area, we can sidechain an eq that every time the kick hits, it will lower 2 or 3 db exactly in that area of the bass track.

This way the kick will be more prominent, but without us boosting it and without ruining the balance of the song.

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The bass dual track mixing technique

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to check our more in depth one of the techniques already explained in our more general "how to mix a good rock/metal bass" article, the most popular one: the dual track mixing technique.

This technique consists basically in having 2 tracks of the same bass take, they can be either the recording of a bass d.i. duplicated in 2 independent tracks, or 2 microphoned tracks, pointing to different parts of the cabinet (one needs to capture the high end and one the low end of the bass tone).

On the individual tracks, narrow down the eq of the low-end track by using a lo-pass filter from 500hz down (you can use also a hi-pass from 40hz up if you feel like you need to clean also some low end rumble), and on the high-end track use a low pass filter from 7khz down and a high pass from 500hz up.

Now that we have our 2 tracks nice and separated in terms of eq we can use any type of distortion we want in the high end track, for example an amp simulator (some also like to use very nasty metal amp sims for guitar to add grit to this track), and in the low-end track we should add a nice broadband compression to start making the low end stable, by reducing 2/3db of gain.

Once the 2 tracks are properly processed it's time to balance them in volume (it's likely that we will have to put the high end track quite lower than the low end one, because of its capacity of be more ear-piercing.

Now that the 2 tracks are well blended together is time to route them into a group track and load in this track an eq to sculpt the sound, if we need it (for example some like to cut a bit around the 300hz area to remove a bit of low-mids mud and to boost a bit around 920hz to add some nasal tone), then we can load a multiband compressor, with 2 bands that should be matching the frequency areas of the 2 tracks, so that we can shave off some other unwanted fluctuation in dynamics without changing the general tone, because if we would use the same compression settings for both tracks there's a chance that what sound good for one of the 2 tracks would have unwanted results for the other.
Bear in mind that the low end track already has a bit of compression, so we should keep it in mind when applying this second compression to the low end track (so let's be less aggressive with the gain reduction than we would if there was just one compressor), and that in the distorted track the gain as well acts a bit as compressor.

Finally we need to make the bass tone rock solid, stable on its railway in which it needs to stay in terms of volume and dynamics, and in order to do so we nee to load a limiter (or a maximizer) and push it until we reach 3db of gain reduction (click here for an article on how to keep the Bass stable with a Limiter).
Once you find the right setting to keep the bass track tamed and stable all the time, you can basically use the output ceiling of your limiter as volume knob, and in order to dial the right level it's important to connect it with the kick drum, as explained in this article.

I hope this was helpful!

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Using a VU meter for better low end balance

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to see a trick used to have a visual reference to improve how the low end in our mix will translate from our DAW to any other source.

Let's start by saying that we're going to need a VU meter, a metering plugin that recreates the one of an analog mixer (or a real analog one), and by specifying that 0db in the VU meter equals to -18db in the fader of our DAW.

Now that we have clear this concept, let's get to business: 
The idea is to get right the balance between the kick and the bass, and then to balance all the rest of the mix around these 2 elements.

Let's start by loading the VU meter in the Stereo Buss and by setting at zero the kick and bass faders. The first thing to do is to play the kick track (or group of tracks) and raise the gain until it peaks at -3db on the VU meter.
Now it's time to bring in the Bass: let's raise the gain until the peak of Bass and Kick combined reaches 0db in the VU meter (when they play together).

Why 3db of difference? Because if you would duplicate the kick track and play the 2 kick tracks together there would be a 3db in volume increase. By making sure the bass adds 3db to the total, means that the bass is equal in volume to the kick, balanced, and that if we mix the rest of the instruments around this equilibrium there's a good chance that our mix will translate better in the real world.

Once the 2 tracks are connected, you can raise and lower them in volume together to fit them in the mix but try to keep the same proportion, so that the equilibrium remains stable.

I hope this was helpful!

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Low latency monitoring (in Studio One)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

This time we're going to talk about a theme that is often overlooked, but that is of paramount importance: the low latency monitoring, and in ordering to do it, we're going to use the interface of Studio One, but the same rules applies to every DAW.

There are 2 types of low latency monitoring: hardware and software.

Hardware low latency monitoring is the ASIO protocol (also known as Hardware Direct Monitoring), a protocol created by Steinberg, which basically lets the drivers of the audio interface to dialogue with the DAW and work together to allow the lowest latency possible for the configuration.

A particular type of low latency monitoring is called Blue Z, or "low latency monitoring for instruments", which is a bit more advanced than the classic ASIO one and it's a function supported only from certain audio interfaces (such as Presonus, RME etc), which allows you to monitor with almost zero latency without stressing too much the CPU, but will not let you hear the sound processed by regular plugins, just for some which are made for that (for example in Studio One you can add a delay or a reverb to the real time signal, those plugins are called DSP plugins).

The "software" low latency mode instead (which still anyway involves hardware as well) is the one called Green Z, or "Native Low Latency Monitoring". This mode is more advanced, and it's supported only by few, more recent interfaces and computers, and allows the signal to pass through the whole chain of effects and come out as fast as with the regular hardware low latency monitoring, but it requires also a comparatively faster computer.
Studio One, unlike other DAW, allows you to choose different settings for the buffer size, which is the protection from jitters when doing playback, and the so called "device block size", which is the buffer size for recording: the lower it is, the faster.
This way you can set "dropout protection" medium or high, to make sure there are no jitters, and then just set the device block size as low as possible to minimize the latency, and finally enable the "green z" in the mixer on the tracks you are recording in real time to use this function that minimizes the latency and also lets you hear all the plugins in real time.

The more the cpu is struggling by making many tracks passing through real time processing, the more we will need to balance, for example by increasing the buffer size (and therefore the latency), or the dropout protection (to avoid hearing weird noises during the playback, which is anyway a function tied to the buffer size), so anyway monitoring is a balance game: we need to be aware of how much we need low latency (if we are recording we do, if we're mixing we don't) and change the settings according to the phase we're in.

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