Bringing Guitar Tracks up front??

Some suggestions for micing an amp and making your guitars stand out.

If aren't already using a Shure SM57 or a Sennheiser e609 you might want to check into those. You will also want to record your guitar parts in mono and then double them. Pan one between 70% to 80 % left and the other one exactly the same amount right. This will give you a wall of guitars type of sound that brings it up front. Be sure not to put any other instruments in the same stereo filed or your guitars will be come mushy.

Separate out you lead guitar into a different portion of the stereo field and make sure the guitars don't share the same space as the vocals.

If you are unable to mic your amp I would suggest using a DI in with the same approach to panning. Additionally you may want to look at software modelers. There are several freeware versions as well pay versions. There is Native Instruments Guitar Rig, Waves GTR, Ik Multimedia Amplitube, and Line 6 GearBox for software packages that work as plugins. There is also the outboard processors from Zoom, Digitech, Line 6 and others.

For the last item you can always try reamping the original signal and recording it back through GTP3. This will allow you to double the signal with a slight delay and pan them into the desired position in the stereo field.

Tom,

The EQ for a particular track is wholly dependent on what sounds good to you. I can only tell you what I do to get things to sound right. I usually start off with separation of instruments within the stereo field as I mentioned. Each having it's place that doesn't interfere with the placement of another instrument in the mix. I then go through and do a rough EQ of a particular instrument soloed out to get the tonality I am looking for. I then bring the instrument back into the mix and see how it sounds in the mix. The EQ curve is different depending on the particular guitar amp combination, what bass and bass amp is being used, the drum kit and the vocalist.

Modern recording techniques is a book I would recommend using as a reference point. You can find it here. The thing to remember is that there are no rules to recording. Just things to avoid. One of those things is using too much compression. Compression should be used sparingly to bring sizzle to cymbals and a snap to the snare. To level out the inconsistencies of a bass players line or such. You don't want to over compress and take the life out of a recording.

AS far as the getting that in your face sound it would be hard to say what to tweak in the mix to get where you want to be without hearing the track. Maybe if you could post the song up somewhere where some of us can take a listen (maybe soundclick) we could point yuou in the direction of how to pull the guitars up front in the mix the way you are looking for.

By the way on Crushing day if you listen to it Joe has doubled everything in the guitars including the lead. Each guitar has a slightly different tone and slightly different position in the stereo field giving you the sense the sound is thicker.

About the cab/mic modeler plug-ins. Of the packages I mentioned I can only reference the Amplitube and Line 6 Gearbox. Amplitube I don't much care for and haven't used in nearly 2 years. The Line 6 GearBox will allow for acabinet model and mic model independent of the amplifier model. Basically what that means is that you can use your DI from the am and use the speaker and mic combination from the modeler.