Robby,

> a hole appears to form between the bass and guitar after the transition occurs. <

If you mean there's a hole in the response at low frequencies, this is typical in rooms that have no acoustic treatment. The solution for that is to add bass traps in your control room. If this is not what you mean, please clarify.

--Ethan

A picture is worth a thousand words... and an audio clip would be worth ten thousand. :)

I think I know exactly what I mean... I have been having the same problem... It's like you've got a nice smooth part of the song going. Some bass, some drums, etc... It's kickin, feeling pretty good. The heavy part comes up, and you'd figure that the addition of the distorted electric guitar will just add to the existing energy... but somehow, the song just gets weak right there! It loses that energy that was building up for the big crescendo feel, and just kind of feel limp... SO FRUSTRATING. This is one sound that I still have not totally figured out how to acheive. I've tried doubling guitars, and increasing the bass, but this just seems to make stuff seem muddier....

Sometimes heavy distortion can really make guitars sound thin at the same power level - cut back on the distortion, or try boosting 200Hz/4kHz on the guitars to beef them up.

is the guitar low and low mid heavy cause it could just be masking everything down their when it comes in and turning the instruments that are masked are just going to muddy up the mix and kill the dynamics off the song, if thats the case thin out the distorted electric.

Yep,
From listening, I get the feeling that the guitars are too fuzzy. Resulting in too much harmonics and not enough weight in the low & mid.

I think the boosts at 200Hz & 4k might help. I know that I nothched the kick at 200, soo that might need some filling.

Thanks for kickstarting my brain again. I'm back in the studio tomorrow, so I'll let ye know how I get on...

Robby

Yeah, one thing about straight-out distortion is that it can give a really thin, flappy feel because it distributes the energy over broadband (square and triangle waves tend to do that). It starts to sound more like white noise than music - Giving it a kick at specific frequencies will make it sound more like an instrument again.

Cabinet selection and micing techniques and positioning can also get the same effect as those boosts, so you might want to experiment.

I think this is a situation where "LESS is more"

Larrye

Yup,

A gentle roll-off over the upper frequencies and some selective boosting in the lower seems to be doing the trick..

Thanks again...