Hi all, I just have a quick question regarding that "big" sound we often hear about and doubling the guitars that I haven't seen covered anywhere.

OK, so let's say I've naturally doubled a guitar part by recording it twice. I've learned that the convention is then to pan these left and right at opposite sides of the stereo field, but that's if you've just recorded the take with one mic.

However if you're recording with 2 mics you have 4 tracks to play with, and fit into the mix. if you pan all of those tracks in different positions presumably your mix is getting busier all the while. So I guess what I'm asking is, is there a general rule of thumb for this? Does the room mic stay in roughly the same place in the mix as the close mic, or do you move them around? Lets say I had quite a few parts to mix in, some clean guitar a couple of overdriven parts before reaching the distorted part, my concern would be not having room to add anything extra.

Any thoughts, or links to materials appreciated :)