Crafting Nickelback’s Massive Guitar Tones with Chris Baseford

When you think of Nickelback, you think of a massive wall of guitar sound. It’s powerful, it’s polished, and it hits with the force of a freight train. So how do they achieve that signature modern rock tone? You might picture a room full of cranked-up, glowing tube amps, but you’d be surprised.

During a deep-dive session, producer and mixer Chris Baseford pulled back the curtain on the guitar production for a recent Nickelback album, and the biggest reveal was a shocker: there isn’t a single live microphone on a real amp anywhere on the record. It’s all in the box.

Let’s break down the techniques Chris used to build these colossal, all-digital guitar tones from the ground up.

It’s All In The Box: The Amp Sim Foundation

That’s right, the foundation of that huge rock sound is built entirely on amp simulators. This wasn’t about finding one magic preset, but about blending different digital tools to create a unique and powerful sonic texture.

The primary tools for the job were a combination of the Fractal Axe-Fx III, focusing on its Rectifier models, and the ML Sound Lab Diesel VH4 amp sim plugin. Chris stressed a key point: while these are great tools, the specific brand doesn’t matter as much as the intent behind how you use them. The best producers can make a killer record with any modern toolset. The secret is to find what works for you and use it with a clear purpose.

Building the Wall: Layering With a Purpose

“More guitars” is a common crutch in heavy music, but simply duplicating a track and panning it is a rookie move. To create a truly massive and dynamic sound, every layer needs to have a reason to exist. This is a core production philosophy that Chris applied throughout the Nickelback sessions.

Instead of just stacking identical tones, he built the arrangements by adding layers that filled new sonic spaces as the song’s energy increased.

How to Layer Guitars Intelligently

Moving from a verse to a chorus isn’t just about getting louder; it’s about getting bigger. Chris achieved this by ensuring new guitar layers introduced new frequencies.

• Change the Voicing: A new layer might play the same progression but with a slightly different chord voicing, emphasizing different notes and harmonics.
• Add a Different Texture: A great trick is to add a completely different type of sound. For the post-chorus, Chris brought in a fuzzy, single-note part playing an octave. This layer doesn’t just add more distortion; it fills a specific mid-range frequency that wasn’t there before, making the part feel wider and more complex without turning to mush.

The goal is to think like an orchestrator. If you just want the same sound to be louder, turn up the fader. If you want the part to feel bigger and more impressive, add a layer that contributes something new to the overall frequency spectrum.

The Guitar Bus Chain: Processing the Tone

Once the individual guitar tracks are recorded and layered, they get bussed to a single track for group processing. This is where the raw tones are sculpted into a cohesive, polished, and mix-ready sound. Chris walked through his evolving plugin chain.

Step 1: Broad Tonal Shaping

The chain starts with a simple but effective EQ, like the xiQ, to do some foundational shaping. This involves adding a bit of low-end weight, some body in the low-mids, and a touch of air on the top end. It’s a gentle, broad-strokes move to get the overall character in the right ballpark.

Step 2: Surgical Cleaning with EQ

Next comes the cleanup. Every distorted guitar tone has some nasty, “fizzy,” or “honky” resonant frequencies that can build up and sound harsh. Using a precise EQ like the Brainworx bx_digital V3, Chris performed surgical cuts with a very narrow Q. This isn’t about scooping all the mids; it’s about identifying those specific, annoying frequencies that poke out and taming them without gutting the tone’s power. This step is crucial for getting guitars to sit in a dense mix without fighting the snare or vocals.

For a deeper dive into these kinds of precise adjustments, check out our guide to EQ Strategies for Mixing Modern Metal.

Step 3: Creating Width and Space

To make the guitars feel like they’re wrapping around the listener, Chris uses a “psychoacoustic spread” plugin like Shred Spread. This tool creates a sense of width that goes beyond simple panning, pushing certain frequencies just outside the true stereo field. It’s a powerful effect that can make guitars sound immense, though Chris warns it’s easy to overdo it and cause problems with mono playback. The “Shred” knob on this particular plugin also adds its own character by rolling off some high-end while pushing the midrange, further shaping the tone.

Step 4: Add It Back In

Mixing is a process of give and take. After all the shaping, spreading, and surgical cuts, Chris found he had carved out a little too much of the core tone. The final plugin in the chain is another EQ used to add some of the “boxy” midrange character back into the sound. This demonstrates a vital mixing lesson: your processing chain is an evolution. You add, you subtract, and you adjust until it sounds right.

The “Forgotten” Trick: Reverb on Heavy Guitars

In the world of modern metal, ultra-dry, in-your-face guitars are the norm. But Chris Baseford breaks from this trend by adding reverb to his main rhythm guitars.

Hearing the massive, arena-sized drums next to bone-dry guitars felt disconnected. The guitars sounded like they were in a closet while the drums were in a stadium. To glue them together, he uses a subtle, short reverb to give the guitars their own sense of space.

Getting the Sound: The “Brick Wall”

The specific sound he loves comes from the “Brick Wall” preset on a Lexicon 480L reverb unit (or a quality emulation of it). It’s a short, non-linear reverb that gives a sense of ambiance and a small tail without washing out the transients or making the riffs sound muddy. This small touch makes the guitars feel like they belong in the same room as the rest of the band, a technique often heard in big 80s rock and 2000s nu-metal mixes that is ripe for a comeback.

From Concepts to Reality

These techniques—from creative layering and surgical EQ to adding space with reverb—are the building blocks of a professional rock mix. Understanding the concepts is the first step, but seeing them put into practice by the pros is how you truly level up.

At Nail The Mix, we put you in the virtual studio with the world’s best producers. You get the raw multitracks from massive songs and watch the original producer mix it from scratch, explaining every plugin, every fader move, and every decision along the way. If you’re ready to move beyond presets and truly Unlock Your Sound, this is the place to be.