most of our songs were specifically written for 2 guitar players so the 3rd guitar parts are usually limited to overdubs in certain parts. Generally speaking, I amp the two main guitars a little differently, hard pan both, and EQ one of them a little brighter than the other. One guitar only uses the amp and cabinet, no other pedal effects. The 3rd guitar parts are usually slightly panned right or left and I use a slap-back delay via a bus to the opposite site. It seems to work well enough to get good separation, but the arrangement and parts are key.
A big mistake I made early on was having too much distortion which made everything sound like mud. The other huge mistake I made was spending too much time on the individual guitar sounds instead of doing it in the whole mix (duh!). So I'd get great sounding guitars on their own, but they sounded like total shit in the mix. Now I start with reference channel strips and also roll up all rythm guitars to a track stack for final processing.
Our style is more or less straight up rock influenced by 60s, 70s vibe with a 90s type of sound if that makes any sense so the guitars sound weak and thin on their own, but great in the context of the song.
As far as getting clarity and separation overall, I found a really good video about how Andrew Schepp does this with vocals. I haven't tried applying this to other instruments other than drums. I create 3 aux tracks for punch, clarity, and 'smash' then I can individually dial in each drum component to cut through mixes. Probably easy enough to adapt the same technique to other instruments.
Here's the vid: YouTube
A big mistake I made early on was having too much distortion which made everything sound like mud. The other huge mistake I made was spending too much time on the individual guitar sounds instead of doing it in the whole mix (duh!). So I'd get great sounding guitars on their own, but they sounded like total shit in the mix. Now I start with reference channel strips and also roll up all rythm guitars to a track stack for final processing.
Our style is more or less straight up rock influenced by 60s, 70s vibe with a 90s type of sound if that makes any sense so the guitars sound weak and thin on their own, but great in the context of the song.
As far as getting clarity and separation overall, I found a really good video about how Andrew Schepp does this with vocals. I haven't tried applying this to other instruments other than drums. I create 3 aux tracks for punch, clarity, and 'smash' then I can individually dial in each drum component to cut through mixes. Probably easy enough to adapt the same technique to other instruments.
Here's the vid: YouTube