I like your style on this, Craig, but I think it must come from you being an old school guy who used to use tape machines. I mean this in the nicest way. I started out on 4-track, and there were guys around in those days telling me something like "You oughta try to make a record on a mono machine," as if I were cheating by using so many tracks. I was up to 24 tracks when I switched over to digital recording and virtually unlimited space, but I still find myself being frugal with tracks. It just feels like good technique. I mean, if you have to hear something played 20 different ways, maybe you should wait until you know what you want before you start recording.
 
One area where I don't scrimp and really appreciate the breathing room is vocals. I keep all the lead vox takes and never clean up after comping -- because you just never know. And I often create BG Vox tracks by stacking one singer as many times as needed to get the sound. But I play live with a 4-piece band and I don't see why you'd ever need 6 guitars (speaking of rock'n'roll, of course; I don't write symphonies).

Larry Jones
I like your style on this, Craig, but I think it must come from you being an old school guy who used to use tape machines.

 
Believe me, I was more than happy to get out of "8-track jail"! I've done projects with lots of tracks, and projects with very few tracks...but these days, one of the main reasons for not using lots of tracks is that I want music that can be reproduced live. The discipline of singing a vocal and having it be "the vocal" reminds me that live, I get only one chance to do a part 
 
I try to make working in the studio as close as possible to a live performance experience, which also helps explain the limited number of tracks. Maybe if like you I was playing with a 4-piece band, my "live" thing would be covered, and I'd use the studio more to stretch out.

Thanks, Craig, and by the way, you're the perfect guy to ask about a problem I had with amp sims on buses a while back (one of the reasons I gave up using buses so much). If I had three guitar tracks panned differently, say one left, one right, and one center and wanted to use the same amp sim sound, I would set up a bus track to which to feed all 3 guitar tracks. But no matter what I tried (making sure stereo interleave was activated, etc.) I couldn't for the life of me avoid all 3 guitars going dead center out of that bus. As soon as I gave up and put instances of the same amp sim on all 3 tracks' FX bins, everything was fine, of course. Have you heard of this issue, and whether or not it still happens? I would LOVE to be able to send all 3 tracks to one amp sim bus, obviously, especially since now I'm learning that multiple instances of the amp sim will add to aurally cluttering up the mix.

I think sending three tracks to the same amp sim is not a good idea if you're using a sound that adds distortion. The intermodulation issues will be dreadful. I take an opposite approach - split one guitar into different bands, and each goes to its own amp sim. I wrote about this in one of the eZines where I talked about multiband processing track templates.
 
As to your original question, make sure the amp itself is set up for stereo. A lot of amp sims default to mono in/stereo out.

Good to know...Thanks, Craig!

baberufus: I didn't mean to hijack your thread. To your question, I'd say it's possible to get a clean, open sound while using 350 tracks. As others have pointed out, it's not likely that all of those tracks would be playing at the same time, plus you could EQ and pan them out of each others' way. But it's easier to get the open sound you're looking for by using fewer tracks, fewer instruments, and an arrangement that focuses the listener on what's important in the mix and leaves silence here and there as part of the performance. This, of course, is hard to do, but it's been done, and you can do it, too.

Haha no problem Larry...thank you too for your input!

I try to keep it simple, for one.  And try, as much as possible, to capture the sound as I want it (note:  I don't play guitar so it is all about engineering, not playing). 

I would say that EQ and different guitar sounds are your friend here

You mentioned you wanted to add "texture" - I think you almost need to change your mindset and completely forget how individual elements sound and just think about the bigger picture

Eg - I would suggest using extreme EQ on the different parts so that you make the best of each sound - IE if you have a throaty mid range guitar tone take the lows and highs out, then find a nice thin/scooped tone and take the lows and mids out (being quite extreme)

On their own they may sound "weak" but together you should start building the "texture" you are after without increasing the mud

I would also suggest panning everything to the centre whilst EQing and not rely on pan for separation until you are happy that you don't have a mushy/muddy mess - panning will then help open things up

Good luck!

Boydie

I would also suggest panning everything to the centre whilst EQing and not rely on pan for separation until you are happy that you don't have a mushy/muddy mess - panning will then help open things up

Good luck!

I think this is very good advice