My wife was right ... though she framed the cymbals as being "tinny". I rolled off the highs on them to curb the wince factor a little ... but I think that I'm going to have to pull stuff down more in the mix. Thanks all for the thoughts on that.
I liked the verb on the snare, but I can see sense in pulling it back some.
The bassy thing at 2:15 is a synth patch in Absynth 4.0 -- in for that moment in the song and then gone. I could put it somewhere else ... but was afraid of overuse of it.
The guitar solo has an odd story behind it. This is an upgrade from an old project I'd worked on 20 years ago with my old college guitarist, who has since passed on. When I knew that I wanted to update this song, I wanted to, as a tribute to him, add his solo (which I love) to the solo part. What I then had to do, in order to do so, was figure the exact tempo I'd originally worked in. Since I'd long sold the equipment that we originally recorded with, and all that I had left to work with was the original stereo wav file of the project, I inserted the wav of the recording into Sonar, and attempted to match it to a tempo grid.
This was a bit of a bitch. It was complicated by the fact that when I first started recording many years back, I was a bit of a knucklehead, and I did stupid stuff.
... like made the tempo of this piece 135.75 bpm.
Yep. I'm THAT stupid.
When you're hearing the guitar solo, what you're actually hearing is the original wav blended in under the current project. Bringing the guitar part up would make the blend more noticeable. I did eq a lot of the highs and lows out of it, and bump the region of the lead ... but it's a careful fence I walk, and the balance is tricky to negotiate.
The effect on the voice, Trip -- was another unusual thing I did. I subbed out the main to a vocorder, and then brought it up just to where it adds, but doesn't overwhelm. It's almost like it's always there, but then it isn't. It's just an audio "tickle". I agree w/ DOL's comment on the vocal timbre though. I think warmer would improve the tone.
Thanks for the comments folks. Great stuff and I'm truly appreciative.
Kev-