Johnny Don't!
New member
...you will be even better off with an actual amp, mic, and proper interface. Even the mic'd sound of a solid state Crate practice amp sounds better to me than an amp sim. Just my opinion tho. Best is a hard driven tube amp breaking into the sweet spot where the speakers themselves start adding the desired tone. This is where magic happens.
I was surprised to see that I had gone three pages into this thread before anyone mentioned amplifiers. If you (the original poster) are new-ish to this forum, I *highly* recommend following Jimmys69's advice; he is the most consistently "right" contributor to this forum, at least as far as I've seen and in my own humble opinion. He knows his shit.
That being said, I will give you some advice but you must keep in mind that I do NOT use plug-in/software amp simulators, so I don't have much advice to give in terms of that. Actually none at all. However, I *love* layering guitars and do it rather frequently, but I always use an amp and a mic. You will always get the best results that way in terms of a single guitar track, but you will *MOST DEFINITELY* get the best results with an amp and a mic when layering guitars.
I haven't seen much from the OP regarding what you will use the stacked guitars for (rhythm tracks, leads...?), nor what the end goal is. So I'm kinda flying blind here but hopefully some of what I write here will be useful to you.
Most of the time, when I'm layering guitar tracks, it's to flesh out/thicken a rhythm track. Exactly how you mult (layer) the guitar tracks depends on what aspect of the guitar part yer trying to enhance or accent.
For example, if I'm layering a guitar track on a tune that is mid-tempo (think 95-110 BPM) and has a slightly distorted tone but I want to emphasize the "ringy" or "jangly" sound of the higher strings, I'll find a solid tone that would work without any layering and track it. Then, I'll change something in the tone to bring out the "chiming" of the high strings. Sometimes that means something as simple as switching from the neck pickup on the guitar to the bridge pickup; other times it might mean switching out the guitar or the amp, or maybe adding a stompbox to the chain. Sometimes I'll adjust the EQ on the mult track. Maybe the solution is as simple as opening the tone pot on the guitar all the way.
The point is, if you want to achieve a thicker, fuller, wider, bigger sound via layering guitars, then make sure each guitar track has a slightly different sound; this will create a HUGE sound that boosts certain frequencies and cuts others. And as I've seen a lot of peeps post on this thread, panning the layered guitars is KEY. Where the tracks sit within the stereo spectrum is a major part of layering guitar tracks to expand the sound.
If you want to get *REALLY* crazy, you can use the method Alice in Chains used to track all the guitars on their second album, "Dirt." Their guitarist, Jerry Cantrell (who I had the pleasure of meeting at the release party for their 2010 album...but that's a whole other story..haha), did some CRAZY shit while recording "Dirt." Each guitar track was recorded three times, such that three tracks made ONE single track. What he did was he used different speaker sizes: the first pass would be through a large speaker, like a 12" or 15"; the second pass would go through a mid-sized speaker, like a 6" or 8"; then the last one would be through a small speaker, like a tweeter. This allowed them to control various aspects of the tone from section to section within a song, and it also allowed them to process (effects/EQ/compression, etc.) different parts of the frequency spectrum of the guitar as they saw fit. And if you listen to that record, the guitars are HUGE. Just enormous.
The only hard & fast rule here is that in order to achieve a fuller guitar sound via layering, you *MUST* play a new track. You can't just copy & paste the original track and change the tone; it just doesn't work that way. You need the subtle differences in the different performances to really achieve the "thicker" effect. This is especially true where vocals are concerned, but it's also true for guitars...but vocal multing is a topic for a different thread.
Hope that helped.