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Getting that "The War on Drugs" guitar tone (self.guitars)

submitted 1 year ago by TheFarm to c/guitars

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Hey,

So I've been working on recording a song and I am trying to get a solo tone similar to the kind of long, sustained, gain-y yet clean sound that The War on Drugs tends to use.

Any suggestions? I'm mostly recording direct input through my pedal board into a tascam sound card. I've fiddled around with my overdrive pedal (Soul Food) but the tone gets too distorted and muddy to give that clean sustain.

Is it time to get a sustain pedal? Apologies in advance if what I'm asking about gear doesn't make much sense..

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[–] kak1154 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A compressor I assume. I'd be interested to hear other replies.

[–] R5N 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with the exact tone OP wants but a compressor is a safe place to start if they want sustain without additional coloring.

What DAW are you using OP? The stock comp plugin should be totally serviceable.

[–] TheFarm 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm using Ableton, so there should definitely be options to play around with compression. I hadn't thought of using compression to achieve that kind of tone but now that you mention it, it seems reasonable haha. I'll give it a shot!

[–] R5N 2 points 1 year ago

Good luck! I personally started to use compression in my chain much more once I started thinking of it as a waveform shaping tool.