I was listening to my new favourite band .

The bass player owns a (rather) famous studio in Sweden: http://www.svenskagrammofonstudion.com/welcome.html

Most of their records have been recorded here, and engineered or mixed by the bass player.

I love the sound of their albums.

I noticed while soloing each channel that on many songs, it appears that sounds pannned to the left channel were quite warm, whilst the sounds panned to the right channel had much more top end and mid-range sounds.

Is this a common practice? Is this really what I'm hearing? What could be the advatage of doing this? Would it help to draw a distinction between the guitars in each channel? Do instruments which sound too similar cloud the stereo image if they appear on opposite channels?

Any insight would be appreciated.