MusicMuse

What Vibrates and What You Hear

The electric guitar as a midrange engine, and what happens when guitar, bass and djent guitar are asked to occupy the same frequency range at once.

Electric guitar — The Midrange Engine

The one instrument here where what vibrates and what you hear are in roughly the same place — and where the speaker, not the amp, does most of the tone shaping.

The numbers — fundamentals, and where the identity actually sits

The speaker is the filter — and this is the most under-appreciated fact in electric guitar

Impulse responses — what they are, precisely

Pickups — the comb filter, and the resonance nobody accounts for

Scale, tension and the physics of a bend

Distortion, and why power chords work — the real reason

Recording — and one number that settles an argument

THE THREE-WAY CROSSOVER

All three at once, split by where each one puts the gap between vibration and perception.

Three answers to the same question, running simultaneously and never overlapping. The bass owns everything below 100 Hz and is the only source of an actual fundamental in the track — its own pitch reconstructed from harmonics the cabinet can barely reproduce. The djent guitar owns 100 Hz to 1.5 kHz plus the 2–4 kHz transient, high-passed so its low fundamental is gone, gated so its envelope collapses to a 20-millisecond click. The electric guitar owns the sustained midrange and every melodic note, in the one band where what vibrates and what you hear are the same thing. All three are the same physics — Mersenne's equation, the pickup comb filter, clipping harmonics — and the only variable is where you put the gap. And the one collision you have to plan around is real and unavoidable: the kick's beater click sits at 2–8 kHz and the guitar's pick attack at 2–4 kHz, so they overlap by design, and the only fixes are timing, panning and transient shaping.

Recipe

The rest of the guide

Sections of the source document that this page did not carry.

Bass guitar — The Harmonic Engine

The note you hear is not in the signal. Your brain reconstructs it from the overtones — and the industry-standard cabinet doesn't reproduce the fundamental at all.

The missing fundamental — get the terminology right, because four terms are not synonyms

The numbers

Where you pluck — real physics, and the most useful thing on this page

Pickups, electronics and the DI problem

Production — why bass gets compressed harder than anything else

Djent guitar — The Transient Engine

An extended-range guitar whose fundamental is deliberately removed at the desk and whose envelope is collapsed by a gate — so what reaches you is an attack, and a pitch rebuilt entirely from overtones.

The word, and it is exactly as stupid as you hope

The tone — where the fundamental actually goes

The gate, and the Tube Screamer — the two pieces of the chain that actually define it

Extended range — the specs, and why the low string flubs

Technique and production — with two corrections

1. THE CAB NEVER PLAYED THAT NOTE

Electric guitar ▸ Bass guitar — You cannot strip a fundamental that the speaker was already failing to reproduce.

The variable that moves: The harmonic strategy moves into the midrange instrument — and the guitar has to go down far enough for it to have anything to work on.

Hinge (what already agrees): They are the same instrument by design, by physics and by author. Both are magnetic-pickup solid-bodies from the same workshop; both obey f = (1/2L)√(T/μ); both use the identical pickup comb-filter equation, V = sin(π·X·F/(L·F_open)), with only the absolute frequencies differing. And both already depend on the missing fundamental more than players realise — a Greenback in a real Marshall 4×12 measures F3 at 106 Hz, which is above the open low E's 82.41 Hz. Your low E through a 4×12 is already partly reconstructed.

Friction (what fights): But there's nothing left to strip. The bass strategy is: let the fundamental go, and let the overtones carry the pitch. That works because a bass's fundamental sits seven octaves below its identity content, so removing it costs nothing. On a guitar the fundamental range and the identity range overlap — high-pass a standard guitar aggressively and you don't reveal its harmonics, you delete the instrument. There is no redundant region to throw away.

Resolution: Move the instrument down first, then apply the strategy. Take the guitar into baritone or dropped range so the fundamentals sit genuinely below the cabinet's usable floor, and let the cab do the filtering it was always going to do. Then voice the chords so the harmonics spell the chord: root-and-fifth and octaves only, because a 3:2 ratio's intermodulation products generate a difference tone exactly one octave below the root, reinforcing the note — while an equal-tempered major third's 13.7-cent deviation scatters its products across unrelated frequencies. That is the physical reason this works and complex voicings don't. The guitar ends up carrying weight it is not actually producing.

Recipe

2. SPLIT IT AT 450

Bass guitar ▸ Electric guitar — The midrange is already there. The cabinet is what removes it.

The variable that moves: The midrange identity moves into the low instrument — and the compression that makes a bass work has to be confined to half of it.

Hinge (what already agrees): The bass already has the guitar's midrange and most players never hear it. Measured on one instrument: through a miked 1×15 the 500 Hz region sits more than 15 dB below the 150 Hz peak; on the DI that gap is 5–6 dB. Through a 4×10 it exceeds 20 dB. The raw instrument is far more midrange-forward than the sound it's traditionally presented as — the cab is a subtractive device. Take the DI and you already have most of a guitar.

Friction (what fights): But the two instruments demand opposite dynamics. Standard bass practice is a 5:1 to 10:1 ratio with 5–10 dB of gain reduction routinely, explicitly aiming at "very little dynamic range," because inconsistency in the low end reads as weakness rather than expression. The electric guitar's identity is the opposite: the varying pick attack is the character. Compress a bass the way a bass gets compressed and you have destroyed the exact transient that would let it read as a lead voice.

Resolution: Split the instrument and compress only the half that needs it. The documented crossover: a clean low band low-passed at 100–300 Hz, compressed hard, doing the structural job; a distorted high band high-passed at 450 Hz–1 kHz, left comparatively dynamic and treated exactly like a guitar — overdrive in front, amp character, pick attack intact. The low band gets bass discipline; the high band gets guitar freedom. Then pluck near the bridge so (1/n²)·sin(nπa/L) keeps the upper harmonics excited, and let the high band carry melody in the upper register.

Recipe

3. DJENT WITHOUT THE EIGHTH STRING

Electric guitar ▸ Djent guitar — The pedal that defines the djent front end has been on ordinary pedalboards since 1979.

The variable that moves: The transient envelope moves into the standard instrument — and the filter number cannot come with it.

Hinge (what already agrees): The Tube Screamer is the shared mechanism, and it does the same thing in both worlds. A high-pass inside its clipping feedback loop (4.7 kΩ, 0.047 µF) corners at ≈720 Hz, so harmonics above 720 Hz get the distortion stage's full gain and bass notes get clipped least; a low-pass after the diodes (≈723 Hz) shapes what was generated. A standard-tuned guitar into a TS into a cranked high-gain amp is the djent front end. The extra strings are not what makes the sound.

Friction (what fights): The high-pass filter does not transfer, and copying the number breaks it. Djent high-passes at 100–140 Hz because an 8-string's low F♯ at 46.25 Hz is genuinely redundant information. A standard guitar's low E is 82.41 Hz — an 80 Hz filter barely grazes it, and a 140 Hz filter removes the actual note along with its first harmonic. The gap between vibration and perception is manufactured in one case and would be self-destruction in the other.

Resolution: Copy the envelope, not the filter. Everything that makes djent read as djent is downstream of the pitch: the gate at 0.1–1 ms attack and 10–50 ms hold, the constant palm-mute discipline with every note identical in length, the TS front end, and the quad-track panning at 100% and 70–80% with different amp models on each pair. Take all of that. Leave the high-pass at 80 Hz so the low E keeps its fundamental. What comes out is djent articulation on a six-string — a genuinely useful thing that people attempt constantly and usually get wrong by chasing the tuning instead of the envelope.

Recipe

4. THE TOP FOUR STRINGS

Djent guitar ▸ Electric guitar — An eight-string contains an ordinary guitar. Almost nobody plays it as one.

The variable that moves: Sustain and melody move into the transient instrument — and have to be routed away from the strings that can't support them.

Hinge (what already agrees): The instrument already is the other instrument. An 8-string in standard F♯ tuning is F♯–B–E–A–D–G–B–E — the top six strings are a guitar in standard tuning with a B and an E on top of them. There is no gap to bridge in the hardware. Everything separating the two is signal chain and habit.

Friction (what fights): Every element of the djent chain is a sustain-killing device, and the physics is against the low strings too. The gate closes after 10–50 ms. The mute is constant. The mix assigns the guitar to the transient band. And the low strings have a real inharmonicity problem — fₙ = n·f₀·√(1 + B·n²), where B grows with short, thick, low-tension strings, so a sustained low note's overtones run sharp of the true series and the note reads as indistinct rather than rich. You cannot simply hold a low F♯ and expect it to sing.

Resolution: Split the instrument into two signal paths by string group, and put the melody where the physics works. The bottom two or three strings do rhythm only: gated, muted, TS in front, high-passed, transient-forward. The top four strings bypass the gate and the overdrive entirely and go to a clean-to-medium amp with reverb and long sustain — where the instrument is just a guitar, inharmonicity is negligible and notes ring properly. One player, one instrument, two chains that never meet. This is audibly what the best extended-range players actually do, and it is almost never described as two chains, which is why it's so often imitated badly.

Recipe

5. THE ONLY INSTRUMENT WITH A FUNDAMENTAL

Bass guitar ▸ Djent guitar — The eight-string did not go below the bass. It climbed into its lap.

The variable that moves: The transient moves into the low instrument — in the one merge where both instruments are physically fighting for the same band.

Hinge (what already agrees): They are in the same frequency range, and that is a measurable fact rather than a figure of speech. An 8-string's low F♯ is 46.25 Hz; a bass low E is 41.20 Hz. A 9-string's low C♯ is 34.65 Hz; a 5-string bass low B is 30.87 Hz. The guitar sits just above the bass in both cases. There is no natural separation left to rely on, which is exactly why this is the merge with the most to gain.

Friction (what fights): And that is also the problem, not the hinge. Both instruments want the same 40–120 Hz, and the sources are candid that there is no standard solution — recommended crossover points disagree by hundreds of Hz between credible engineers, and even specialised djent-production guides describe it as "a bit of a challenge" without offering numbers. Mansoor states the principle without a formula: "The less overlapping frequencies you have, the more perceived space you have in a mix."

Resolution: Assign the sub-100 Hz band to exactly one instrument, and it has to be the bass — then give the bass the guitar's transient too. High-pass the guitar at 100–140 Hz so its low fundamental is gone and its pitch is reconstructed from harmonics; the bass keeps everything below and is the only source of an actual fundamental in the track. Then split the bass and apply the djent treatment to its upper band only: distorted, gated, so the bass generates its own hard click at 2–4 kHz. The result is an inversion of the usual hierarchy — the bass is carrying both the weight and a percussive attack, and the guitar has been reduced to pure midrange and transient. It is the most useful arrangement in this guide and almost nobody sets it up deliberately.

Recipe

6. FIX IT AT THE NUT

Djent guitar ▸ Bass guitar — Give the low string its fundamental back, and you immediately find out why it was filtered out.

The variable that moves: The fundamental moves back into the transient instrument — and this is the only merge that cannot be done at the desk.

Hinge (what already agrees): The missing fundamental runs in both directions. If a bass can imply 41 Hz through an Ampeg that's already well down at 60 Hz, an extended-range guitar can imply 46 Hz through the same mechanism — the psychoacoustics doesn't care which instrument generated the harmonics. And both instruments solve the same tension problem with the same equation: the bass's 34" and 35" scales exist for exactly the reason a guitar's 27" and 28" scales do.

Friction (what fights): But remove the high-pass and you get flub, and it is a physical defect rather than a mix problem. Inharmonicity — fₙ = n·f₀·√(1 + B·n²) — grows as strings get shorter, thicker and slacker. An under-scaled 8-string's low F♯ is all three, so its overtones run sharp of the true harmonic series and the note reads as dull and indistinct. A bass doesn't have this problem because its scale length and string design were built for those pitches from the start. The filter was hiding a defect, not creating a style.

Resolution: Fix it at the instrument, then the filter becomes optional. Multiscale, 27–28" on the bass side, and gauge the low F♯ properly — .080 to .086 for roughly 19–20 lb — so B stays small and the fundamental is genuinely clean. Then you can set the high-pass at 60–70 Hz, which is the documented practice for drop tunings anyway, and let the guitar produce its own real low end. Which forces the bass to move: it plays in its upper register with the distorted band carrying it, borrowing the guitar's strategy. This is the only merge in ten guides where the resolution is a hardware change rather than an arrangement decision — you cannot EQ your way to it.

Recipe

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