“Don’t Cry” Guitar Solo Instrumental – Dimitar Nalbantov

“Don’t Cry” is a classic guitar solo driven ballad with an arrangement composed and constructed as a solid base for the main guitar theme. It’s one of my favorite genre, using the guitar as expressive and storytelling character. The main goal is to achieve phrasing and melodic lines sounding like spoken-word lyrics.
Using wah pedal to emphasize the guitar solo was my first choice.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ult120h4enY

When the new Efektor Wah was ready to be brought to the world, I had a dilemma:

What style is best to show the wah pedal in a good musical content.

After many years of analyzing the guitar pioneers who are using the Wah as one of their main tone shaping tool and using it not just to spice up the sound, but also as a part of the whole melodic line and making the guitar sounding more colorful and dramatic..
I fired up my daw and started to put a simple, but effective and time approved guitar chain.

I had to have a striking and passionate guitar timbre, so the melody would sound even more appealing.

Gear used in the solo guitar:

Guitar: Ibanez RG 320 with retrofitted original Ibanez EDGE tremolo
Strings: Elixir Nanoweb 9 – 42 tuned in standard E.

The chain starts with:

Efektor WF3607 Wah Filter which goes into Efektor OD3603 Overdrive

and into Kuassa Amplifikation Vermilion: Amp: C – Clean channel.
The tone is finished with a simple delay using 600 ms of delay and small repetition.

CB: Dunlop™ Cry Baby*
Let’s put the chain together and analyze the tone:

Efektor WF3607 Wah Filter

I chose the classic model:
The classic CB: Dunlop™ Cry Baby* type

It has a nice vocal sweep frequency range and this makes it particularly suitable for distorted lead sounds. It’s a very responsive wah, capable of producing almost any sound you have in mind.
It is an ideal addition for the guitarist who enjoys solo performances. That’s why it was my first choice.

I’m using DIY Arduino-based USB Expression Pedal to control the Efektor WF3607.
You can read how to build one and use it in your DAW here:
https://www.kuassa.com/diy-tutorial-how-to-build-arduino-based-expression-pedal-for-efektor-wf3607/

Efektor OD3603 Overdrive I decided to use one of my favorite overdrive pedals in ourEfektor OD3606 – The Boutique Overdrive.
Using it as my main source of overdrive and gain.
With the overdrive and level settings at max and its fat and dynamic tone,
It pushed the clean channel of “C” amp into a singing high gain saturation.

OD3603

Kuassa Amplifikation Vermilion: Amp: CAmplifikation Vermilion packs everything that every guitarists difficult not to love: jangling cleans, raw tube saturation, springy reverb and more. The “C” model in Vermilion is clean, sparkling and tight, so it took the Boutique drive really well.The speakers and microphones arrangement
The settings are quite simple:
Speaker 1: Iron Grill 1×10 with the classic 57

Speaker 2: Blonde Vintage 1×10 with Dynamic 441

Using a small 1×10 speaker and why.

There is a famous quote:
“If you want a big sound, use a small amp,” Joe Walsh

Most of the time BIG does not mean using big speakers.
When mixing a solo guitar and trying to put it into a dense mix, also having it blended as a singer in the band, using a small combo or a small speaker cabinet gives better results.

The solo guitar needs to be focused – not buried in lows and resonance frequencies
So the combination of Iron Grill 1×10 and Blonde Vintage 1×10 gave me the best tone that I was looking for.

.
Exact position of the microphones.

The DelayDelay and Echo effects have been around since the 50’s.
It became one of the most used effects in the music.
The delay turned into an extension of the guitar players musical soul.The echoes can still produce the illusion of space without creating a blurred and muddy
sound.

Playing with delay instead of reverb might be the best choice, if you want to keep the solo guitar forward in the mix, without losing definition or transparency.

I was looking for prominence in the mix. So, using only a delay, was my final decision.

Using two delay lanes:
600ms on left channel and 612ms in the right channel gave me a little stereo separation.
Panned hard left and right.