Just read the JP22 thread!

I AM NOT HIM! I dont want to argue! haha. Just pulled a stomach muscle reading some of that!

Jp23 alert!
*snigger* This'll nail the bludger.

Tell me, how do you control your dynamics?

Some info about the room and treatment (if any) might help - a dead room and very close micing will help you get upfront tone. A room with lots of reflections will push the guitar back a little in the mix.

I'm using a rectangular room full of curtains, sofa, matress against each wall so as to minimise reflections.

I try not to track at gig volume as I find this makes the sound too messy, even if my signal to noise level is set right.

Am I doing the right things here?

Try using a really small speaker (4"?), isolated and close-micd. Maybe in another room or something. I used to run an aux through my gorilla practice amp (with a little bit of its on-board crunch dialed in) and you get a tremendous sound from it. Not loud, but tonally amazing. Also you'll have no volume issues while tracking.

peanutjar wrote: Try using a really small speaker (4"?), isolated and close-micd. Maybe in another room or something. I used to run an aux through my gorilla practice amp (with a little bit of its on-board crunch dialed in) and you get a tremendous sound from it. Not loud, but tonally amazing. Also you'll have no volume issues while tracking.

I'm up for giving that a crack. Do you mean mic it up seperately in a different room along with my usual rig?

you say you like your sound, so i won't give you any advice regarding the signal itself.

what i understand is, you want that "wall" of guitars and you can achieve this by layering multiple guitar tracks.
here's what i do:

i record the riff twice for left and right.

then i record the riff a third time, sometimes with slight alterations (octave higher/lower, alternate chords) and pan it in the center. i turn that track lower in parts with vocals and bring it up when there's an instrumental part to fill the space where the vocals would sit.

after that i decide if the 2 or 3 tracks are enough for what i want to achieve (usually in the verse) or if i want the guitars in a certain part of the song to be fuller/fatter (usually the chorus or instrumental part)
if i want it to be fuller i will record additional guitar tracks left and right.

for example, in the chorus i'll double the left and right guitars (that makes 4 tracks left and right) and add 2 more tracks with alternative chords (octave higher/lower, single notes...)

that should leave you with 7 tracks - 3 left, 3 right and 1 in the center. you could go further and record even more tracks but 7 tracks are usually enough.
blend them to your liking and you should have a wall of guitars. but be careful, you have to play them very tight or you will lose definition and it'll get muddy.

send the tracks to a bus and apply eq if necessary (usually some high cut for the fizz and lo cut to leave space for the bass guitar)

layering guitars is very common in metal music. just listen to metallicas black album or any new metal group and you will see what i mean.

Turn the gain down. No, really. Too much gain only produces fuzzy, muddy guitar sounds. The high-gain sound you hear on records is not a ton of gain: it's EMG's interacting with a botique, high gain amp like a Diezel or Splawn. Oh, and what ouzo77 said.

the hugeness in all those albums comes from quadtracking the guitars, with the fredman mic technique. You can use as much gain as you could imagine but the more you add the more eqing your probably going to be doing. Like codemonkey said the room has a lot to do with the "closeness" of the guitar, so an iso-booth would be ideal for metal guitars (and vocals for that matter).

Tracking at live volume isn't neccessary, but with tube amps your not going to get the tubes to color the sound unless you turn up the volume. If you really can't have it that loud you can use a power attenuator.

The fizziness is mostly in the 12k+ range so when you mix you can lowpass at 12k and that takes care of a big chunk of that annoying fizz. Also 2, 4, and 6k has some of that high frequency fizz but you just have to play around untill you get the tone to your liking.

Hi guys!

Tried the small amp technique. Worked well but not for me! Just couldnt get the sound I am after!

Knocking the gain back is a must so defo agree with you there!

However. Came across the way im going to stick with. If anyone asks I will send you the music showing the results.

Basically....I close mic'd one of the speakers from the Line 6 HD147 amp twice. One central about an inch from the cloth of the cab & one towards the rim of the speaker....then (this is where it got very interesting), I took my effects loop line out into the input of the Marshall TSL amp and put a single central mic close to the speaker of the TSL. The idea was to have the same recognisable tone but to give it a different flavor. I panned the close central mic of my line 6 far left, my offset mic about 20% left, then the alternative amp was panned about 50% right.

From there I did exactly the same thing with the Marshall TSL amp but took the effects line out into the line 6 amp. Just mirrored it!

TRY IT! SOUND AWESOME!

xMannequiNx wrote: The fizziness is mostly in the 12k+ range so when you mix you can lowpass at 12k and that takes care of a big chunk of that annoying fizz. Also 2, 4, and 6k has some of that high frequency fizz but you just have to play around untill you get the tone to your liking.

That was massively helpfull while tweaking my mix last night! Loved that it made my sound much more clear but still retained the origional tone!

Cheers!