Guitar Tracking help!

[keevhren]

Hey!

I've been recording a friends band for the last week and we're finally onto guitars after tracking drums. Here is a sample of the tracks I'm working with:



We took our time, I think I got some pretty decent raw sounds, and have beat detectived everything a bit to make it nice and tight. The above sample has no plugins/processing what so ever on it. I'll eventually drop in some samples to help beef things up a bit, but overall its a good start in my opinion.

Yesterday we got set up to do guitars and got a tone we thought was pretty good for rhythm but I'm not feeling it this morning. I went kind of overboard with setup, so am currently running the following:

JCM 2000 (Guitar players head) into a marshall 4x12. Mics are (one per cone)... 57, AKG 451B, SM7B, and Audix I5. I'm also running a feed off of a Hughes and Kettner Red Box.

Here are all 5 sources:












The type of band/style is a tight punk/hardcore style, kind of in the veins of A Wilhelm Scream/Strike Anywhere/Propagandhi. I've tried numerous quick blends of Individual mics but still am not happy with one. The phase for all 5 sources is pretty dead on, and regardless, I will be aligning them all to be spot on once we have the finished product in hand. I'm not mixing this project, so wanted to give whomever the mix engineer is a good amount of choices for tones and also obviously a good source to work with.

Each mic is on a separate cone, at the 'sweet spot' where the cone meets the rest of the speaker.

Also for the amp settings, its at:

Bass - 5
Middle - 3
Treble - 7
Vol - 3
Gain - 1

On the Lead Crunch channel of the JCM 2000 TSL. I just feel like its lacking that power/beef behind it but can't seem to get it while futzing with the amp settings. We're planning on at least doubling up on rhythm parts, potentially quad tracking (based on articles I've read) so I'm under the assumption that less gain is a good thing, since the more stacks of it there are the less I'll need on each individual take.

Thoughts?

Any help would be much appreciated as always!

 

[keevhren]

Okay, so tore it all down and started from scratch... here's a new sample (with the drums):



Just guitars:


it was a single take (so there are mess ups) by me as I just kind of figured the song out after a minute or two and wanted to get something down for people to listen to. Here's what I switched it up to:

JCM800 into a Mesa 4x12. I'm running a Tube Screamer pedal in front.
--- SM57 just off the cone, right on the grill
--- AKG 451B Dead on the cone, about 6" off the grill

JCM2000 TSL into a Marshall 4x12. I'm running a ProCo Rat pedal in front.
--- Audix I5 just off the cone, right on the grill
--- AKG 451B Dead on the cone, about 6" off the grill

I'm also recording a clean DI for re-amping purposes if needbe and am still taking the feed off of the Hughes and Kettner Red Box from the JCM2000.

In the above take the only thing I've done is slightly nudged each track so that everything is in phase during playback as far as the guitars go. The 800 is panned hard left. The 2000 hard right.

I feel like this is definitely a step in the right direction as far as the tone they're looking for so am much happier with the current results. My main concern currently though is... do you think it's too much gain currently? I've used it sparingly but with all the tracks stacked it sounds quite crunchy. We are going to be having at least two full rhythm guitar takes in each song, and potentially quad tracking for the heavier parts, so I'm thinking I should dial back the gain a bit for both heads/pedals as I don't want it to just turn into complete muddled mess. Thoughts?

Thanks for all of the help thus far!

PS... Does the ground noise of the amps stick out too much? The only real place I hear it is during pauses (which will be edited out) and then during the last part of the ring out of the song.

 

[chrisjorge]

Single take and you think the timing is off? Uh... Nope. Sounds tighter than most mixes in this forum already! Timing is not an issue. I like the guitar tones myself. But as a drummer primarily, I will defer to the guitar dudes to give better feedback in that realm. You have a very good start here. Keep it up!