ORIGINAL: yep

Yes to everything. Recorded dirt guitar sounds almost always use less distortion than the live sound. About half the gain they usually play with is a good starting point. The reasons are myriad and complex but the results are clear.

You might be safe to say less gain works live as well. No one in the audience hears the dynamics and tone of the amp from three feet away either. There's nothing more sobering than hearing your 'Awesome Monster Tone' turn to buzzy mush than a 30' guitar cord...

ORIGINAL: mixsit
...You might be safe to say less gain works live as well. No one in the audience hears the dynamics and tone of the amp from three feet away either...

Live sound is a whole different world, especially for heavy rock.

For one thing, the human ear hears very differently at rock-concert volume than it does at typical home listening volume. A guitar that sounds flat, weak, and fizzy at 83dB may sound massive and roaring at 110dB, in part due to the Fletcher-Munson curve and in part due to to the physicality of the powerful sound waves literally rocking your body.

For another, rock concerts typically have a *very* high ambient noise floor. If you have 90dB SPL ambient noise (shout to be heard levels) and you dial up a guitar sound that is swinging 18dB VU on chugging palm-mutes, then unless you are running with RMS levels into the pain threshold, all the detail and sustain from the guitar is going to get lost in the crowd noise.

I don't disagree that many heavy rock guitar players are overly gain-happy both live and in the studio. I think a lot of it comes from a tendency to play solo through headphones or nearfield speaker playback, where you get an exaggerated sense of detail and clarity. Push the listening speakers back a few feet, add in some bass, drums and splashy hi-hats, and turn the guitar level down enough for the vocal to squeeze through, and all of a sudden that massive guitar sounds like weak midrange fizz.

But even still, there is very often a significant difference between what works in the studio vs what works live. The players will have built a sound and an approach focused towards live performance (which is what they do, after all). It is the job of the engineer to find the most flattering way to capture and present the experience of the musicians' performance in a way that will translate well in real-world playback.

Cheers.

I wish I could subscribe to your posts yep. I keep learning from you. Thanks for posting such great explanations of what the deal is.

Hi there.

I do alot of Heavy- Deathmetal recording (some with guitars tuned down to 6 halftones). I usually plug the git into a distortion pedal and then into the amp.
Only turn up the volume knob on the pedal and almost no distortion. The same with the amp. The pedal only boosts the input volume and the amp does the rest.
I go out on a marshall 300W box and got upto 5 different mics set up. Watch the phase of the mics and mix together. U have to record at least 4 tracks rythm guitar and pan em left and right.
Hardly distorted but gets fatter the more traks u record.
Only minus is that the guitarplayer got to play the rythm stuff 4 times and has to play it quite exact. Then u will get a fat distorted guitar.

Great topic... I notice my live distortion sound is not great recorded, sounds too buzzy. Plenty of attack so I don't think that is the problem. I was going to try rolling off some highs, but something tells me this won't help. I will try recording with clean chan at the same time.

We are talking rhythm guitar, same idea for leads?

ORIGINAL: Mako
...We are talking rhythm guitar, same idea for leads?

Leads, as in dedicated guitar solos, are kind of a different animal, and you can get away with a lot more.

For one thing, the guitar solo typically does not have to "make room" for anything else. It takes over the role of the vocal, which typically means that all of the headroom and upper-midrange space that would otherwise be devoted to vocal clarity is now available for the guitar, so a lot of the masking effects that affect rythm guitars become a non-issue.

Leads tend to require a little less "thinking." A lead guitar that sounds good solo is likely to be effective in the mix.

Cheers.

I agree with the "room in the mix" concept, it still seems I have to back off the distortion for lead

I know of different types of distortion, sonar has a nice built in amp distortion plug in with several of them.  I use distortion practices on synth sounds more than on guitars with my instrumentals.  I'd say have your apprentices play with the knobs an exact the sound you all are talking about to achieve.  

a classic example of where less distortion makes for bigger sound,
even when it isnt'.
 
Heart's "Barracuda"
 
if you listen closely, 
you'll hear that one guitar is barely crunchy,
and the other sounds like a les paul full up thru a twin.
big sound, very little sustain,
and yet this thing rocks harder than most metal.
 
just food for thought.

Wow, 10 year old thread, back from the dead...