how do you pan your guitars?

[earworm]

the guitar is an ESP, nice looking guitar, totally black, don't know the model or so..

check this out:

http://belgianunderground.com/download/surtur/guitar_amp.jpg
http://belgianunderground.com/download/surtur/tim_guts.jpg

had a sennheiser md421 aimed straight at one of the speakers,
not exactly in the middle of it, and not on the edge, "in between",
built a little "cage" around it cause i didn't wanna pick up the dirty reverb of the long hall where the amp was standing in,

this mic ran trough a symetrix 528 preamp, hardly used any compression,
gave a lill boost at 6khz, and a little cut at maybe 1khz, little boost at around 200 hz, check this picture, this are the guitar settings:

http://belgianunderground.com/download/surtur/guitarsettings_528.jpg

i also put an AKG c414 above the amp to act as a roommic but didn't use that signal, it ran trough a joemeek vc8, but didn't like the result,
might mess with it during the mix but think i'll just use the signal i got now

i'm gonna change a little bit on the guitar sound..its not really what i want, its close, it sounds pretty close to how the amp sounded in real life, so its allmost cool. the guitars u hear are totally untreated, didn't do any software thingies with it yet,

and i think my stereo image of the guitars isn't super stable,
since i got different guitar players on Left and Right you can hear..well... "unstability" ...hard to describe

gonna try to double guitar one L+R
and double guitar2 L+F too and pan this one more to the centre,

will see

thanks for the comments

(ps, about amp settings, can't remember, boosted the presence to '7' or '8' i think, gave a little boost on the highs, but not too much,
cut some of the bass, but couldn't edit the mids cause that button broke off, too bad)
both guitarist played trough exactly the same settings, thats what they wanted

 

[northsiderap]

Panning my guitars

Like this:

<img src="http://northsiderap.com/ButterGTR.jpg">

 

[7string]

Like this:

<img src="http://northsiderap.com/ButterGTR.jpg">

hahahahaahaha I hear that more and more guitarists are doing this as it makes the wood fresh again... like boiling strings... hahahahaha

 

[Cyrokk]

Listen to Metallica albums (or others, aerosmith, avenged 7x) for example. When they do there usual, have one guitar start the riff then the other jump in, you can hear that it is pretty much always panned hard. correct me if im wrong.

Actually, Hetfield recorded three rhythm guitars. Two panned hard left and right, and one straight down the middle.

 

[earworm]

hehehe, yes, i bet adding butter to the mix will make the guitars sound more FAT indeed

 

[Lotus]

hey earworm..as someone who has listened to death metal (in the past) and heard 100's of albums over the years i can say this is pretty good for a demo...ive heard worse albums!! Good work!! I know its not finished yet either..

On another note i read years ago about james hetfield of metallica saying that he recorded his rhythm guitars for "Master of Puppets" 8 times to beef up the sound! I suppose it was a hard panned left/right plus some in the middle config or something...I also remember that he had a setup called the "tent of doom" for the "And Justice For All" album in which his setup (amp/mic) was under a cloth "tent" to get that purely dry guitar sound which AJFA is so famous for...

 

[tylerxxx]

this might be stupid, but is recording the same exact track more than once necess?ary? i mean, how would that be any different from just duplicating it?

i'm a "newb" haha

 

[Theros]

They arent the same, if you play it twice you get subtle diffrences... its impossible to get the recording <i>exactly</i> the same twice...

 

[ecktronic]

The guitars sound really good. Im kinda jealous.
I was playing about with layering and panning ideas of guitars yesterday. I was only recording direct at the time as i was at home, but it ended up sounding pretty full considering the tone was a direct tone.
What i did was record the power chord part twice (used a metal zone type distortion) and pan about 45 each way. I then recorded this a third time and kept it centre. I repeated these two steps again but with a totally different distortion (big muff type for some beef). and panned about 35 each way and the third one centred. So i now had 6 tracks of the same guitar part, but all recorded seperately.
Next i recorded the lead guitar part with the hi gain pick up setting. I then recorded the lead part again and panned them about 45 each way.
I added a little reverb to the lead part and balanced the levels right and it sounded really nice and full.

 

[earworm]

thanks for the comments already !
didn't put any reverb on the guts, i'll probably test to see what it says,
but don't want to loose too much of this sound,

i changed the mp3 i got online, cut it in two, just to be sure that "no one steals the song before its released" , u know...

http://belgianunderground.com/download/surtur/surtur.htm

once again, right click and save as, or download won't work (at least thats the case on my pc)

gonna double everything and run it trough my sansamp psa1 to see if other distortions will have a crazy affect

 

[ecktronic]

Take a listen to "Stereo field" in the link at the bottom.
This is a sample of the guitar layering and panning technique i explained about. The sound is full but also very wide. ( i did add a little stereo widening plug in to the wave, but just to show how thick and wide can be acheived). I know the tone isnt great but i did say i was just experimenting at home with a direct input.

 

[tubesrawsom]

if you pan stereo guitars toward the center you might run into phase problems
of doubling waves or canceling out thts why pros pan hard left and right and add some verb to it.

 

[ecktronic]

if you pan stereo guitars toward the center you might run into phase problems
of doubling waves or canceling out thts why pros pan hard left and right and add some verb to it.

Are you sure the pros hard pan? Who told you that?
There aint any phase issues i can hear in my "STEREO FIELD" sample below, but could have been luck i guess.

 

[stash98]

i hear the term 3 and 9 all the time..always thought that was hard panned becase of the face of a clock..what does it realy mean?


also what i do in a situation w/ 2 guitarists is hard pan each guy on each side...that is a great way to have a live sound..you can then use a stereo spectrum plug to move them around a bit so they overlap and meet in certain areas of the spectrum..like ill have each guitar at 10o right, but it will be wide enough to go to around 25 left.

 

[ecktronic]

Hard pan to me is FULL left and FULL right. 3 and 9 is the face of a clock so they are both panned 50 each way.

 

[IronFlippy]

Maybe back the drums out a bit in the mix, they seem to want to overpower the guitars.

Although a lot of metal guitarists hate this, but why not have one of the guitars have a bit more of mids on his amp and the other one have the cut mids? You can do a lot with this since they're playing the same thing pretty much. Right now it just sounds like one weak guitar (no offense, I know that's what you're trying to fix). The added mids of one guitar can make it seem louder, while the cut mids of the second add the "heaviness" that you're looking for. I read somewhere that one of the guitarists for Killswitch Engage, I think it was, uses two amps setup like this. Now whether or not you like the music, he still has this huge tone.

 

[earworm]

saw killswitch engage live last year, but can't remember how their guitars sounded like
thats kinda what i'm trying to do today, to make the guitars fuller in total, and i notice that if i boost one guitars mids, i have to get rid of some on the other side indeed, i'm getting closer to a fat sound every day

thanx

 

[lenMCHC]

When I did my bands record we chose to single track, and double w/ an aux bus... and double mic the bass guitar..

amps used... 5150 and ultra plus.
drums ... Yamaha stage custom

http://www.myspace.com/breathofsilence

tell me what you think?
guitars panned hard left and right.
kick, bass, solo's centered
snare 5degrees left.

vocals, doubled and panned 35/35 for fullness.

 

[tylerxxx]

When I did my bands record we chose to single track, and double w/ an aux bus... and double mic the bass guitar..

amps used... 5150 and ultra plus.
drums ... Yamaha stage custom

http://www.myspace.com/breathofsilence

tell me what you think?
guitars panned hard left and right.
kick, bass, solo's centered
snare 5degrees left.

vocals, doubled and panned 35/35 for fullness.

the breakdown at the end of nothing lasts forever, is really beefy.
come play in texas.

 

[mrface2112]

i'm a HUGE fan of panning one guitar hard L and the other hard R. in fact, i rarely pan anything outside of hard L or R.

then i slap a delay on each of them (usually in the 60-120ms range, depending), bus the delay returns to separate tracks and pan each of them opposite the dry guitars. For instance, Guitar R has Delay L and vice-versa.

you'll be amazed at how much this fattens up guitars. now instead of cranking the crap out of the dry guitar on the right, i'll raise the level of the delay panned to the L and it makes the guitar on the R sound both louder and fatter. of course, don't use the hard pans as gospel--play with the relation of the panned delay to the dry signal and see what works for you, for the song.

and always be sure to check the mix in mono.


cheers,
wade

PS--solos, of course, go straight up the middle (unless we're talking dual unison solos--think iron maiden)