Larry, there are no hard and fast rules except to say, get the sound up front while tracking. In country that means the right mic, preamp and compressor if you're serious about making a competitive mix. I will get to EQ in a minute but here are some pretty regularly used components while tracking country.
The microphone can vary and I will say country recordings generally experiment with mics more than other genres of music and in a range of price ranges. Taylor Swift's previous album used a $500 mic from Avantone, the Mitek CV4 is a recent popular model but then you see a lot of Telefunkens, Brauner and Neumann mics as well, into either a V76 (real popular) preamp or 1073 derivative. The V76 is big and tubey sounding which is why you hear it being used on many vocalists. The most popular country compressor is a Tubetech CL1B or LA2A i.e. big transformer opto and transparent. The vocal is everything in country and it needs to be right. I have found that great hardware gets you to the sound quicker and if done right, minimal EQ is required except maybe low end roll off and 2.5k emphasis which is the radio frequency that needs to "pop" the vocal for small speakers.
The kick sound has emerged in the last 10 years with emphasis in the 50 to 65hz range and limited, slight dip around 100 to let the bass play through but this can vary depending on how things are tracked. 2k is the tick of the kick for small speakers and that has to be right as well. Once again this can vary a bit below or above this point.
Bass has to be tracked right with a good DI preferably large transformer and the Tubetech or LA2A is generally the compressor of choice. Sans Amp gets used as well for adding some grit/growl to the tone. EQ is hard to recommend because it varies depending on what was tracked but generally some emphasis from 90hz up to 125 is required, slight large bell cut around 300 and depending on the high end some emphasis from 1-1.5k.
Snare, depending (notice a lot of depends because once again, tracking should get you in the ball park so less EQ is required) on how it was tracked will get some emphases around 200 to make it fat. High end can get a shelving boost from 4k up or shelving cut depending on what is required. Put a little room reverb or delay on the snare and the whole drumkit sounds large.
Overhead and room mics are everything to the sound of the drums, get the kit sounding close to what you want with just these tracks and then bring in the kick and snare to round out. Then move the overhead and room mic levels up or down as required to create the sound of the room. This is critical because its basically the sound of your track. EQ on the upper end may be an issue and I tend to low pass around 8-10k, for a warm sounding room or not at all. You can either smash the room tracks with an 1176 on all buttons mode for that swishing cymbal sound that releases slow (aka led zeppelin, and yes I have heard this used on country albums) or go with something with a little more accuracy to real world.
These are the basic up the middle, generalized areas I run into all the time. Once again EQ will vary depending on how things were tracked so it's kind of pointless to make specific recommendations. The above is a general guideline. Use LCR panning approach. Guitars are a whole other discussion and they are highly dependent on the basic picture that comes into view from Voice, Bass and Drums above. I will say this, the song should already be compelling and toe tapping with just the elements above. If not, rethink the arrangement of the drum bass relationship and how the vocal plays off those. An acoustic guitar could be critical to rounding out the vibe at this point. I generally put it far left or right with a bounce delay or reverb to the opposite side (warm room setting) and high passed from 150Hz up to 250Hz depending on the rest of the mix.
That will get you started. I apologize if the hardware above seems extreme for a home recording person but that's where the big boys and girls start. It's virtually impossible to make inexpensive hardware sound like that, believe me, I have tried.
I forgot to mention that a lot of country gets mixed, after tracking on an SSL and lesser extent Neve console. Actually there are relatively low cost hardware components that will help you get that sound. C1 compressor or even one of the low end SSL clones on the master buss helps to make it a punchy mix. If you are getting the idea that it doesn't come easy or cheap, you are getting the idea.