I updated to X1 then X2 then X2a this year, had some learning curve.  Purchased ARC2 and now that my room has been corrected, I am hearing how bad my guitars are mixed. I am not using an amp, have tried TH2, Guitar rig 5  and Amplitube and they (how I mixed them) all sound great by themselves, but don't sound very defined in the mix. I have decent guitars, a Gibson les paul, a couple of schecters with active pickups, a tele with SD little 59er. So I think the guitars are good and they sound fantastic thru an amp. However I am really trying to use the TH2 or GR5.  Played with it for many hours last night and feel like I just mixed in a circle.  I am into the heavy/hard rock guitar tones. For example, AC/DC back in black album has a great mix, or at least everything is very audible and defined. I listen to it over and over trying to determine what or how they got the guitars so crisp and clean yet they are still heavy.  I have heard a few songs in the songs section with the guitars sounded fantastic while using TH2 or GR. So I know it is possible.
 
 
Any suggestions?
 
p.s. everytime I figure one little thing out, 10 new oppertunities for improvement arrise! :)

There are a lot of good tips and discussions in the techniques forum.

Are you applying a high pass filter? I generally cut out everything below 150Hz or so, sometimes even more (as much as you can without losing weight to the sound). Goes a long way toward cleaning up the mix. Also be sure to mix the guitars in context, i.e. without soloing them. Oftentimes a guitar sound that sounds great on its own won't work so well in a mix. And a guitar that sounds great in a mix won't sound so good when soloed. 

One thing I read about the guitars on Black In Black is that they scooped out the mids to make room for the vocals. And also, there is not much distortion going on there, it's a very clean crunch. Of course the Harrison console had a lot to do with it. I also read somewhere that there is no compression on the guitars. 

If you haven't read it alread this article from Craig Anderton has some great advice for dealing with guitar sims...

http://www.soundonsound.c...es/sonar-tech-0711.htm

Also you will want to pan your guitars left and right. Example: If you have two rhythm guitar tracks pan them hard left and right (but IMO not ALL the way). If you do not have two separate rhythm tracks then clone the track you do have and then pan left/right. This should be done with lead tracks as well. Use busses and sends for this.

Also layering helps. If I'm not digging what I'm hearing I will triple clone the track and set one up to be fuzzy bottom end, one for midrange and one for hi end squealiness. I'll tweak the sims and track EQs then blend until it sounds good and then do more tweaks on the bus from there. However with TH2 I find I don't need to do that so much.

That's just stuff I've picked up and figured out myself so it certainly isn't gospel and there are MANY ways to go about this but thought I'd share.

Also if you CAN amp your guitars sometimes that is just the better option. Also I have an old Line 6 head that has XLR line outs on it. I can use that to get a nice clean input signal which is easier to deal with than the dry input from my interfaces. So if you have something around that can clean up your input signal a bit you might want to play around with that.

Cheers.

And if you're looking to recreate the perfect Back In Black guitar sound, just follow this expert advice that I found on Yahoo Answers 

And of course...

Volume - 11

Record in Mono, not stereo.
Cut back on the gain - the AC/DC "base" sound (for example) is more of a dry crunch than distortion.  
High Pass at 60hz ish to make room for the bass.
Low Pass at 12khz ish.
Multiband compress the very-low mids - around 120hz - 300hz so that area doesn't spike up too much.

Record the rhythm g's twice - same guitar, same settings. Pan to 80L/80R or 100L/100R to taste.
They use Marshalls, so head in that direction ...I find most amp sims have a good SLO sim that's pretty close.
Bus to a light verb to fill it out a bit.

If you're particularly tight in replicating the performance, quad track - do the same as above with a complementing amp using the same guitar.
Ex: Mesa Dual Rec sim on 2 tracks, 5150 sim on the other 2.
Pan one set 80/80, pan the other set 100/100.

That should get you in the ballpark.
 

Pan one set 80/80, pan the other set 100/100.

That's pretty cool. Never thought of that one. :-)

Ok guys, just read this article: http://www.soundonsound.c...es/sonar-tech-0711.htm
printed it out and applied as described. It made a HUGE difference!!!! I am thrilled.  The part which I was having diffuculty expression what I was hearing was the "fizz".  This article describes proper eq and how to eliminate the "fizz".  I will need to do additional tweeking, finding the best freqs (annoying/harsh) to eliminate, but I just spent 30 minutes tinkering with the guidance in the article and it works very well.  Thank you so much beepster!!  this is a must read for everyone!!!

Awesome. Yes, everyone working with amp sims should read that article. Mr. Anderton is quite the genius.

Happy to help.