# Scooped Mids: When were we allowed to do it and when why can't we now?



## Given To Fly (Aug 8, 2014)

First, the reason I'm posting this in the Beginners/FAQ section is I pretty much ignored tone controls until I bought my Roadster, an amp that won't allow you to ignore its tone controls. In my Pre-Roadster days I pretty much just dialed in something that sounded good to me at the time. I had a Carvin Legacy 2x12 Combo and a VHT Pittbull 45. I was young, the Legacy did not give me Vai's tone, and the VHT Pittbull 45 is different from all the other VHT Pittbull variations: its a blues amp. I also had a Boss GT-3 which probably did me few favors in terms of guitar playing. But that is neither here nor there...

...When I picked up the electric guitar again the phrase "the guitar is a mid range instrument" seemed to be quite fashionable to say on the internet. Often times it was said in contrast to someone "scooping the mids" on their amp and pretty soon we arrived at more mids, less of everything else which was ironic given how low people were tuning their guitars. Then, to make things more confusing, one of the first recording tips regarding EQ was to make a -3db notch at around 400Hz of varying width. Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifiers were crucified because apparently most bands using them were "scooping the mids" out of their tone yet the Mark IV was coveted for the sound from its V Curved graphic EQ. Marshall based amps such as the EVH of all variants became popular and finally we arrive at the Fletcher/Munson Curves which you can read about here: Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While recording I have learned sometimes an obnoxious guitar tone is exactly the guitar tone you need in order to hear that guitar part but that was in a really dense mix. I can see how scooping the mids out of the entire frequency spectrum would sound bad, mainly because I've heard it sound bad, but that was not real life, it was me playing around with a parametric EQ on an Eleven Rack. The obvious answer could be "use your ears" when dialing in tones but I'm more interested in who used their ears and dialed out too much mid-range which lead someone else to dial it back in and who were the main offenders on both sides? How much of a factor did the emergence of ERG's play in making this an issue?
Please share history, knowledge, and opinions. 


By the way, the Petrucci video of him comparing the Mark IIC+ with the Mark V in "IIC+" Mode compelled me to start this thread because there is clarity in his tone yet almost no mid-range.


----------



## Hollowway (Aug 8, 2014)

That's an awesome question! I can be answered in two ways.

One word answer: Bulb.

Multiple word answer: Tastes change. Plus, as you said, recording and playing in your bedroom sound vastly different when applied "correctly." i.e. There are few things more fun than rocking out on a scooped Mesa or Marshall in your bedroom. But few things sound worse than the same thing at band practice. If you're playing older stuff (like Pantera) it sounds right, but good luck playing any of the modern progressive stuff with that EQ shape. 

Tl;dr - The times, they're a changin'.


----------



## iamnoah262 (Aug 8, 2014)

So, I don't want to pretend to be an expert here, but I think scooping the mids may have come from an era of very mid-centric amps. I had a 5150 II and if I turned the mids past 5 (to me) it sounded like I was playing through a cardboard box. I know that analogy makes no sense but that's the feeling I got. I think scooping the mids still sounds awesome when playing in drop D or drop C#, but once you start getting lower it starts to sound like mud. I also think scooping the mids sounds cool on its own, and often times weird in a mix. Its all apples to oranges though cause mids aren't the same on every amp.


----------



## Hyacinth (Aug 8, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> That's an awesome question! I can be answered in two ways.
> 
> One word answer: Bulb.
> 
> ...



The mid range tone control existed before Bulb


----------



## redstone (Aug 8, 2014)

I can say one thing for sure, your final mic'd tone has to be scooped. A flat EQ sounds like shit. On stage, you just need to make sure that everyone hears your lows, mids and top end, who cares if it's scooped or not.


----------



## hairychris (Aug 8, 2014)

If you're looking for a scooped tone you need to multi-track the hell out of it to thicken it enough to not sound weedy. Subtle EQ tweak on each track would help.

Live, you need a good PA system and a good soundman to make it work. The guitar needs to have enough separation from the bass at the bottom and cymbals at the top otherwise you'll just disappear in the mix.

If you're in a 2 guitar band having one play a slightly scooped EQ and the other a slightly mid-peaked really makes you sound huge.


----------



## VBCheeseGrater (Aug 8, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> Plus, as you said, recording and playing in your bedroom sound vastly different when applied "correctly." i.e. There are few things more fun than rocking out on a scooped Mesa or Marshall in your bedroom. But few things sound worse than the same thing at band practice. If you're playing older stuff (like Pantera) it sounds right, but good luck playing any of the modern progressive stuff with that EQ shape.



This is 100% it for me. It's all about dialing in a tone that will be heard in the band mix without overpowering the other guys in the band. I love the ...and justice for all tone as much as the next guy, but it never works well in a band setting, unless you turn up to ridiculous levels, drowning out and pissing everyone else off!


----------



## tedtan (Aug 8, 2014)

This is about the band mix.

The kick and bass will eat up your low end and the cymbals will kill your high, and since the mids are gone, there is effectively no guitar in the mix.

You can make scooped mids work on a recording by tweaking the EQ points on the various instruments to work well together, layering , etc. And scooping the mids sounds great when you're jamming by yourself. But its hard to pull off live because you really need a good soundman to tweak all the elements to work well together (notice that Pantera and other scooped mids bands tended to have their own FOH engineer traveling with them in order to pull this off; they didn't just pull up to a venue and go with whoever happened to be running sound that night).


----------



## cGoEcYk (Aug 8, 2014)

Fun topic.

Like others have mentioned I think it is all about bedroom/solo tone vs band mix. Until you have a certain level of experience playing in bands and on stage it can be hard to imagine how your tone will sound in the mix. 

I find that as a bassist the bedroom vs mix issue is huge. Bedroom bass tone can get _completely_ lost in a metal context. It is a major challenge to cut through the kick and guitars (scooped guitar with massive low end is the worst but I know how to deal with it- with mids!). I like to dial in a fairly "harsh" solo tone on bass and it works perfectly in the mix.

I was totally guilty of the scooped bass thing when I was starting to play in bands (not as bad as Fieldy but I was inspired by him!). This was around 2000. The end result was the band as a whole having a "wall of mud" kind of sound and I could never hear myself. No one could hear what I was doing even though I was using an SVT-4 (1600w) into a 4x10+2x15 cab setup. It was a revelation when I started using low mids and mids.

In general I feel like the lower you tune, the more mids you want. In the earlier days of extended range (like "extending" to C# or even lower, Drop B) people were still using the kind of scooped tones. A good example I was just recently listening to is Sepultura Chaos AD... sounds kind of fizzy and weak relative to the jams of today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oas3vX4S0Q


----------



## Hollowway (Aug 8, 2014)

MatthewLeisher said:


> The mid range tone control existed before Bulb



True, but lots of people scooped their kids because that's what the popular dudes were doing at the time.

Bulb's like the cool kid in school who starts wearing glasses and then suddenly everyone wants glasses. 

Kind of like how everyone hates on EMGs and loves BKPs now.


----------



## Forrest_H (Aug 8, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> True, but lots of people scooped their *kids*


----------



## oneblackened (Aug 8, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> True, but lots of people scooped their kids because that's what the popular dudes were doing at the time.
> 
> Bulb's like the cool kid in school who starts wearing glasses and then suddenly everyone wants glasses.
> 
> Kind of like how everyone hates on EMGs and loves BKPs now.



Y'know, it's funny you say that, because I did obsess over EMGs for a while... and then promptly realized I really didn't like them. I rip them out of any guitar I have with them and proceed to put in some passives - Duncan or BKP depending on how much I feel like spending.


----------



## Mordacain (Aug 8, 2014)

Given To Fly said:


> By the way, the Petrucci video of him comparing the Mark IIC+ with the Mark V in "IIC+" Mode compelled me to start this thread because there is clarity in his tone yet almost no mid-range.



That's not really true. The Mark series are ridiculously mid-heavy to begin with. The preamp has a very broad mid curve and you'll note he doesn't scoop mids there at all. He runs like most people do with a Mark series (between 4-6).

The only band he scoops is in the post preamp stage with the GEQ with the 750 slider. He boosts the 2200 range and leaves the 240 nearly flat. Those are also midrange frequencies. What this does is notch out the "honk" while letting the rest of the midrange blossom, thus retaining clarity.

The GEQ is part of the power amp section and is final sculpting of the overall tone.

To me, Dream Theater/Petrucci and the classic Boogie "V curve" is not mids-scooped tone. When people talk about that I think of Pantera and a mid-scooped Marshall, which sounds like ass to me, bedroom or not.


----------



## Forrest_H (Aug 8, 2014)

oneblackened said:


> Y'know, it's funny you say that, because I did obsess over EMGs for a while... and then promptly realized I really didn't like them. I rip them out of any guitar I have with them and proceed to put in some passives - Duncan or BKP depending on how much I feel like spending.



I still have yet to try either EMGs (Active, I have their Passive _HZ_ set in my ARZ400, came stock) or BKP, and I still have yet to want to.

I agree with hollowway, I think a big contributor was just influence from musicians like bulb.


----------



## Hollowway (Aug 8, 2014)

Forrest_H said:


>



 Damn you, Siri!!


----------



## Grindspine (Aug 8, 2014)

Another consideration is WHERE the EQ with the mid scoop is in the signal path. For live sound, a normal curve is necessary, as mentioned above.



> Fletcher/Munson Curves which you can read about here: Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


 
Having an initially harsh mid-range can be smoothed by scooping mids. The reason that scooping mids got such a bad rap was that inexperienced guitar players can get a kickass low volume tone, then get lost in a live (or recorded) mix. 

As mentioned with the Mesa Mark example, that V curve works because the amp already has a lot of mids in that area. Boosted mids up front allows for a lot of saturation while keeping lows and highs relatively clear. Scooping the mids up front, then boosting them post-gain, gives a drastically different character to the distortion.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass (Aug 8, 2014)

Grindspine said:


> Scooping the mids up front, then boosting them post-gain, gives a drastically different character to the distortion.


I use the opposite approach, boost first and then scoop afterwards, but I do the boosting and cutting with eq pedals so that I'm not making huge changes to the tone unless I want to.


----------



## Hollowway (Aug 8, 2014)

Grindspine said:


> Boosted mids up front allows for a lot of saturation while keeping lows and highs relatively clear. Scooping the mids up front, then boosting them post-gain, gives a drastically different character to the distortion.



Talk to me, Goose. What do the two different tones sound like? That sounds interesting, and I never really thought about it.


----------



## mnemonic (Aug 9, 2014)

Given To Fly said:


> Often times it was said in contrast to someone "scooping the mids" on their amp and pretty soon we arrived at more mids, less of everything else which was ironic given how low people were tuning their guitars.



First I just wanted to say this is more about retaining definition in the sound. The lower you tune a guitar, the muddier and less defined it is gonna get, unless you extend the scale longer (and even then, its still not going to be as clear as the higher strings). Increasing mids increases the definition and clarity, to a point, but like most things, you can have too much and start going in the opposite direction. 

If you sweep the mids knob back and fourth while playing, it will usually go from quiet, scooped, lacking definition and punch, sucked out, maybe it will feel like your ears need to pop. Sweep it up and it will start to sound normal, balanced. Turn it too high and it will start to overwhelm the rest of the tone, sound honky, boxy, and you'll start to loose definition. Some amps start to make everything sound like "Hurrrrr" if the mids are too high. 

Listen to some albums from the 80's that have scooped mids. They're not scooped mids, they're NO mids. The original release of "Human" by Death was pretty scooped, and it was almost unlistenable because of it (in my opinion, ofcourse). 

Some tones and styles call for less mids than others, and thats fine, theres no one correct answer, really.


----------



## fogcutter (Aug 9, 2014)

Being somewhat of an old-timer, I feel like I lived through this whole scoop thing. I recall playing with some dudes who went way too far with the scooped mids, played super loud, and just got buried by cymbals, vocals, and kick. In the late 90s death metal days, that was kinda easy to do. 

I feel like today we have way better options to retain tight, clear low end frequencies without making the rest of the range of the guitar sound strange. As mentioned by others, some of it is taste/fashion changing as well. 

WHEN WERE WE ALLOWED TO DO IT: pretending to be Dimebag in our bedrooms
WHY CAN'T WE NOW: it's always OK to shred Dimebag solos in our bedrooms. It's even better than OK.


----------



## Grindspine (Aug 9, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> Talk to me, Goose. What do the two different tones sound like? That sounds interesting, and I never really thought about it.


 
Boosting the mids pre-gain gives a great, thick, saturated midrange sound. Boosting the lows and highs post-gain keeps it from sounding nasal by adding the clarity and depth back to the signal.

Boosting the bass pre-gain tends to sound muddy, very rough, thick distortion, think more rumbly than a Rectifier-type distortion. 

Boosting the high-end pre-gain can give a razor sharp attack, but one must cut the highs post-gain to keep it from being too harsh.

Boosting highs and lows together can end a few different ways depending on the specific frequencies and gain stages. I have heard some very smooth sounds, high-gain, but still clear due to lack of mid saturation by doing this. On some amps though, it sounds like rumbly lows, harsh highs, and no mids. Mileage may vary depending on the amp make & model.


----------



## Given To Fly (Aug 9, 2014)

Thank you for the replies! I think this actually answered a lot of questions I had about the electric guitar in general. Ironically, I've been babysitting a friends Jackson SL1 for about 4 years now. It has a beautiful flamed maple top with a Transparent Blue finish. It also has a Dimebucker in the bridge position...I never play that guitar.


----------



## OmegaSlayer (Aug 10, 2014)

Hmm...
I always kill the mids because I prefer a thin surgical sound than a big fat one.
Though I should give a try to some options you mentioned.
Thanks guys


----------



## TRENCHLORD (Aug 10, 2014)

Given To Fly said:


> Ironically, I've been babysitting a friends Jackson SL1 for about 4 years now. It has a beautiful flamed maple top with a Transparent Blue finish. It also has a Dimebucker in the bridge position...I never play that guitar.




There should be a "cation: keep away from maple" slip inside with every sh-13 .

I've had it in (and out) of 3 different guitars now.

It sounded much more balanced in my full-mahogany carvin than in the other two which were maple and maple/walnut necks.
In fact I liked it about equal to the emg 81/18v that's in the guitar now, but in a different (passive vs active) way of course.

That pickup was tweaked for an all-hog w/rosewood board guitar that was short-scale and had loose string tension. (by today's modern-metal standards)
It's designed to make a warm soft loose guitar sound edgy tight and cutting.


----------



## Grindspine (Aug 10, 2014)

Like Trench said, the Dimebucker works well in mahogany. I have an old, crappy, import Washburn Dime 333. The big slab of mahogany balances out the Dimebucker pretty well. I am considering dropping a Black Winter in the bridge just for comparison though. Oddly enough, the Alnico II Pro in the neck of that guitar sounds amazing, though I was afraid it would be all bass and mud.
-----------
But, back on topic, throwing an EQ in before the amp and another in the effects loop is a great way to experiment.

I know that my G-major cuts a bit of middle midrange post-gain on my Triaxis while the pickups I use (Duncan Distortion, EMG 81, Dimebucker, Ibanez V87) emphasize the mids and highs pretty strongly. I still try to boost the mids to get more saturation at times, just have never been completely happy with the frequency and noise responses of the pedals that I have tried so far.


----------



## Andless (Aug 10, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> True, but lots of people scooped their kids because that's what the popular dudes were doing at the time.
> 
> Bulb's like the cool kid in school who starts wearing glasses and then suddenly everyone wants glasses.
> 
> Kind of like how everyone hates on EMGs and loves BKPs now.



Yeah, actually, got the BKPs. Now I'm passively looking for a guitar with EMGs. Never owned a guitar with actives before, kinda looking forward to a guitar with EMGs at some point. 

But then I want a guitar with Bill & Becky Lawrence L500XL too...


----------



## TRENCHLORD (Aug 10, 2014)

Andless said:


> Now I'm passively looking for a guitar with EMGs.





Did you mean to do that?


----------



## Andless (Aug 10, 2014)

TRENCHLORD said:


> Did you mean to do that?



Freudian slip!


----------



## Fear (Aug 11, 2014)

It's funny what has been mentioned here, because Dime and Chuck Schuldiner were two of my main inspirations during my fledgling years playing guitar. I find it hard for me to listen to their tones now and really jive with it. Something is missing and the tone is generally displeasing to me. It sounds thin and lifeless to me in a lot of songs. I was also one of the young guys scooping mids when I was playing in my bedrooms during highschool, but as soon as I got a better amp (ENGL Fireball version 1.0) and started playing in a band situation things shifted. I did my research and realized I needed mids to cut through the mix. Before that I was trying to drown everyone out with my volume knob. You grow and you learn, mids are what makes a guitar a guitar in my humble opinion.


----------



## wat (Aug 11, 2014)

It's possible to get the characteristic "scooped" amp sound while ending up with a final guitar track that still has mids. _And Justice For All_ definitely has the scooped amp characteristic but when all is said and done, if you were to isolate the guitar track, I'm pretty sure the final sound of the track is still pretty much made of mids. Adam Jones on _Ænima _as well_. _That tone also has that characteristic but if you step back, the overall sound is pretty middy.

A lot of the modern trend in metal towards having tons of mids began with MetalCore taking off in the early 2000's which happened to coincide with the taking off of today's production style. 

In the 80's/90's lots of metal players scooped their mids to simulate the effect of Fletcher Munsen curves and extreme volume.(i.e. more volume = more highs and lows so scooping mids simulates that), but in the late late 90's/early 2000's they began mastering albums to sound so loud that it made it _sound_ like Fletcher Munsen curves are already taking effect even when the album is played quietly.

So to get a good sound with this production style, the MetalCore guitarists started figuring out that if you start with a track that's just LOADED with mids and maybe even sounds a little boxy and honky, the honk can be toned down during mixing and once mastered, it will sound both thick and crisp as hell.

My approach is to get a really midrangey tone coming off the amp and then scoop it a little on the channel to tame it some and get it to sit back behind the vocals just the right amount.


----------



## metalgary (Aug 11, 2014)

I guess also Scooped mids can work out better in a 4 piece. When theres two axe's going at it mids are so important


----------



## Mike (Aug 11, 2014)

My first band was some -core style band. Prior to joining a band and before even playing with other guitarists, the metal tone I created for myself was very scooped. My first head was one of the Marshall MG's. I remember this contour knob it had instantly gave me a super scooped tone when turned all the way down. Come time for my first real band practice, my tone is almost inaudible. I'm turned up as loud as, if not louder than the other guitarist and I still can't hear myself. I turn that contour knob 180 degrees the other direction and amazingly bam, there I am sitting beautifully in the mix. Outside of a band mix, the tone sounded like pillows. No balls, very rounded and almost honky, but in the mix it was pretty damn good.

I learned early on that you need mid range out of your guitar setup to be heard. This was way before this whole djent/prog wave. I don't really think djent is the only thing to blame for the increasing use of mids in guitar culture. If you listen to projects done by producers like Jason Suecoff or Joey Sturgis, you can really hear more and more mid range boosted guitars becoming prominent in their mixes throughout the years. I think somewhere in the early 2000's is when producers started to figure that scooped stuff just isn't cutting it for these distorted guitars. From there I think guitarists started adding more and more mids as they figured out that's what everyone else was doing and it sounded good.


----------



## Thanatopsis (Aug 19, 2014)

Andless said:


> Now I'm passively looking for a guitar with EMGs. Never owned a guitar with actives before, kinda looking forward to a guitar with EMGs at some point.


I had never owned anything with actives either until about 6 months ago when I got my Jackson SLSMG. I couldn't be happier with the guitar overall, but I think I like the Duncan Custom in my LTD MH100QMNT a little better. I'm still happy with them though. Was thinking about swapping the 81 and 85 sometime soon just to see how it sounds. I was listening to various examples on Youtube and figure it's worth a try. Worst case scenario I swap them back.


----------



## op1e (Aug 19, 2014)

I grew up on thrash in middle school/high school. Tried to revisit all that stuff a couple years ago and one of the worst sounding bands was one of my favorites.... Testament. Practice What You Preach was passable but Souls of Black was VERY tinny and scooped. I gotta say outta that era one of the best sounding bands was Anthrax, mids for days. Then 2nd IMO would be Slayer. Slightly scooped but not too much. Close behind them Sepultura. Damn you Peavey for not coming along earlier! Really all they had back then was Marshall 800, 900, Soldano, ADA and Mark 2 & 3 for the most part.


----------



## TRENCHLORD (Aug 19, 2014)

Slayer had very good mids, especially on S.O.H..
Jeff's side was big on lower-mids but still sort of scooped in the center, and Kerry has always went crazy with the upper-mids and treble bite. Nice blend.


----------



## ben_hurt (Oct 28, 2014)

There's been a bunch of different eras of tone. While the modern tone has a ton of 'mids' it has a ton of highs, too. I much prefer the Sabbath style sounds, which also had a ton of mids in it, but a warmer top-end. A lot of those guys would turn the bass on their Marshalls all the way down, and put the mids and treble to 10. 

80's Metallica, however, is what I started out playing, which basically has zero bass-playing in the mix so the guitars can have all the thump you want. Sounds great with palm-muted open strings until you want a bass player to be heard. Tough to do live in mid-sized venues, too, if you're playing fast. A lot of guitar cabs can't project bass well for rapid notes.


----------



## hairychris (Oct 28, 2014)

metalgary said:


> I guess also Scooped mids can work out better in a 4 piece. When theres two axe's going at it mids are so important



Nope, it's worse. The one guitar has cover a lot more space on it's own. Scoop it and it goes missing completely.

Not necessarily cranking the mids all the way up but you do need plenty there.


----------



## schwiz (Oct 28, 2014)

Good discussion here! I have nothing to contribute, but I like reading everyone's opinions on tone based on the evolution of metal.


----------



## Forrest_H (Oct 28, 2014)

Off topic, I'm amazed at how many people liked my 5-minute photoshop job for a typo


----------



## Alex Kenivel (Oct 28, 2014)

Well, you went so far out of your way to make a play on words using a picture that obviously took some effort, causing everyone to facepalm. 

My kind of jokes


----------



## vansinn (Oct 28, 2014)

All very cool, true and useful statement - when using real amps.

I'll add: When building a programmable rig, do remember to add a manual tonestack as your finalizer, or you'll have problems walking out the bedroom


----------

