Equalization

• Adjust your equalizer on your amp to eliminate any mid-range frequencies. Death metal guitar sounds are characterized by the lack of discernible mid-range. This gives the rhythm guitar a hollow, bass-heavy sound that is easy to hear over the chaos of the drum patterns heard in this style of music. By lowering the frequencies between 400 Hz and 800 Hz, you can get a great death metal guitar sound.
  
  Increase bass frequencies to compensate for the lack of mid-range in your guitar tone. Since the bass guitar follows the guitar lines almost note for note, the increase in bass frequencies will allow the band to sound full and heavy as required for this style of music.
  
  Boost the high end frequencies as you will need them to be prominent to hear the articulate riffs and lines that are being played. If you do not have enough high-end in your sound, it will be a muffled mess, so clarity is achieved with a slight boost in the 1k Hz to 3k Hz frequencies.
  
  

Strings

• Down-tune your guitar strings to achieve a sound that compliments the guttural vocal style of death metal. Since the vocals in death metal are very low in pitch, you should tune your guitar down as well to get a good death metal sound. Guitars tuned two or three steps down from standard tuning is common as some of the original death metal pioneers such as Death, Obituary and Morbid Angel originated this trend by tuning one full step down in the late-1980s. Modern bands have taken this a step further with bands like Carcass tuning down three, even four steps down below standard tuning.
  
  Use heavier gauge strings. All things being equal, you can obtain a heavier, thicker sound by solely switching your strings to a heavier gauge. This concept started with blues guitarist switching to get fuller clean sounds and has been adopted to accommodate lower tunings and higher-gain amplifiers made by Mesa Boogie and Marshall.
  
  

Pickups and Electronics

• Use active pickups to get a higher-gain sound through your amp. Many of the modern pickups available have higher gain settings that add distortion to the input of your amp. By doing so, your end result will be more saturated with distortion, thus giving you a thicker, more appropriate sound for death metal music.
  
  Use active equalization on your guitar. Many death metal guitar players use preamps built in to their guitars to tweak and increase both the high-end and low-end sound of their guitars. EMG makes the most popular on-board guitar preamp on the market and many different sounds can be created by turning a few knobs on the guitar.