How to Use Reverb on Guitars

You’ve tracked a killer guitar solo. The playing is tight, the tone is aggressive, but in the mix, it just sounds… dry. It feels disconnected, like it’s sitting on top of the track instead of inside it. Or maybe you’ve tried adding reverb to your rhythm guitars and ended up with a soupy, undefined mess.

Getting reverb right on guitars, especially in a dense metal mix, is an art form. It’s the key to creating depth, dimension, and that epic, professional sound. It’s not about just slapping a reverb plugin on the track and calling it a day.

Let's break down a pro-level approach to using reverb on guitars, from fundamental setup to advanced processing tricks that will make your guitars sit perfectly in the mix.

The Foundation: Use Sends for Maximum Control

First things first: stop putting reverb plugins directly on your guitar tracks. The professional workflow for time-based effects like reverb and delay is to use sends and busses (or aux tracks, depending on your DAW).

This approach gives you way more power and flexibility than processing the track directly.

How to Set Up a Reverb Send

1. Create an Aux Track: In your DAW (Pro Tools, Reaper, Logic, etc.), create a new stereo auxiliary track. This will be your dedicated reverb channel.
2. Insert Your Reverb: Load your favorite reverb plugin onto this new aux track. Awesome choices range from workhorses like Valhalla VintageVerb or FabFilter Pro-R to versatile multi-effects units like the Waves CLA Effects plugin.
3. Set to 100% Wet: This is critical. On the reverb plugin, turn the mix knob to 100% wet (or turn the "direct" or "dry" signal completely off). Since you’re blending this track in with your original dry guitar track, you only want to hear the effected signal coming from this channel.
4. “Send” Your Guitar to the Reverb: On your guitar track, use a send to route a copy of the signal to your new reverb aux track. The send fader now acts as your “reverb amount” knob.

Why is this better?

• CPU Savings: You can send multiple tracks (lead guitars, vocals, snare) to the same reverb, saving processing power.
• Independent Processing: You can EQ, compress, and saturate your reverb signal without affecting your dry guitar tone. This is the most important part, and we’ll get to why right now.

The Most Important Step: EQ Your Damn Reverb

This is the move that separates the pros from the amateurs. A raw reverb signal is full of frequencies that will clash with your mix, creating mud and masking other instruments. You have to shape it.

After your reverb plugin on the aux track, insert an EQ.

Cleaning Up the Mud and Fizz

The first job is cleanup. In a heavy mix, low-end information is sacred territory for the kick drum and bass guitar. Reverb can easily add a low-frequency rumble that clouds up your entire foundation.

• High-Pass Filter (HPF): Use a high-pass filter to aggressively cut the lows from your reverb return. Start around 200-300Hz and go higher if needed. You want the space from the reverb, not the boom.
• Low-Pass Filter (LPF): Distorted guitars have a lot of high-frequency energy. The reverb can exaggerate this, creating harsh "fizz." Use a low-pass filter to gently roll off the extreme top end (maybe start around 8-10kHz) to make the reverb feel smoother and less distracting.

The "Carve-Out" Trick for Clarity

Here’s a game-changing technique. The most important part of your guitar tone—the part that cuts through the mix—lives in the midrange (often somewhere between 1kHz and 4kHz). If your reverb has a lot of energy in that same range, it will compete with and blur your dry guitar, making it sound washed out.

The solution? Carve that frequency range out of the reverb itself.

Use a bell-curve on your EQ to cut a few decibels from the reverb right where the main guitar frequency lives. This creates a "pocket" in the reverb for the dry signal to sit in. The result is you hear the powerful, clear attack of the dry guitar, followed by the spacious ambience of the reverb surrounding it. It adds depth without sacrificing clarity.

This is just one of many advanced techniques for EQing metal guitars for maximum impact.

Beyond Reverb: Pairing with Delay for Epic Leads

For guitar solos, reverb alone often isn't enough. The classic sound of an epic lead guitar almost always involves a marriage of delay and reverb. Plugins like Soundtoys EchoBoy are legendary for this.

How you combine them drastically changes the result.

The Classic Parallel Setup

This is the standard approach. You just create a second aux track for your delay (also set to 100% wet) and use two separate sends from your guitar track: one going to the delay, and one going to the reverb.

This gives you independent control over both effects. You get the distinct rhythmic repeats from the delay and the separate sense of space from the reverb. It’s clean, controlled, and effective.

The Serial "Wash" Technique: Reverb After Delay

Want something more atmospheric, trippy, and smooth? Try running your delay into your reverb.

There are two ways to do this:

1. On your delay aux track, place a reverb plugin after the delay plugin.
2. Route the output of your delay aux track to the input of your reverb aux track.

When you do this, the reverb is applied to the delay repeats. This has a powerful effect: it smooths out and smears the echoes, turning them from distinct notes into a lush, rolling “tapestry” of sound. This technique is incredible for creating ambient textures or making a fast, technical solo feel like a fluid cascade of notes.

Don't Be Fooled by the Solo Button

Here’s a trap we’ve all fallen into: you dial in the perfect amount of delay and reverb with the guitar track solo’d. It sounds massive. Then you unsolo it, and the effects completely disappear into the track.

Heavy metal mixes are dense. The wall of rhythm guitars, thundering bass, and smashing cymbals will swallow your effects whole. What sounds like a lot in solo is often barely audible in the full mix.

Making Your Effects Cut Through

This is another reason why using sends is so powerful. You can process your effects to help them survive the mix.

• EQ (Again): We already covered this, but it’s worth repeating. EQing helps your effects sit in their own frequency space so they aren’t fighting for the same sonic real estate as everything else.
• Compression: Try putting a compressor on your reverb or delay return. Compressing the effect can even out its dynamics and give it more body and sustain, preventing it from getting lost when the rest of the band comes in. Learn more about advanced metal compression secrets here.
• Saturation: Adding a touch of harmonic saturation to your effects can help them cut through and give them a more pleasant, audible character in the mix.

Ready to Go Deeper?

Mastering reverb is a huge step toward pro-level mixes. These techniques—using sends, EQing your returns, and creatively combining effects—will give you a massive advantage.

But imagine watching producers like Jens Bogren, Will Putney, or Billy Decker apply these concepts in a real session, explaining every move as they mix iconic tracks from bands like Opeth, Periphery, and Knocked Loose.

At Nail The Mix, that's exactly what you get. Every month, you get the real multi-tracks from a massive song and watch the original producer mix it from scratch. You can see precisely how they dial in effects, shape tones, and solve the same problems you face in your own mixes.

Plus, with a URM Enhanced membership, you get access to over 1,500 more tutorials from our world-class instructors, diving deep into every aspect of metal production. Stop guessing and start learning from the best in the business.