i read about doing the panning and layering thing with guitars a while back, and it improved my sound tremendously. i was really happy with the results. even though my gear sucks and the overall sound quality is poor, the sound of the guitars is much improved. i used to just record once, and then do the delay thing to spread it out, which sounded OK, but then i started recording each part 4 times, and each time with different pickup selections and tones, and then panned two of em about 80% L/R and then the other two about 40% L/R and it made it sound so much fatter. i would experiment and pair up the tracks using two which sounded best together, like ones which complemented each other's tone. the subtle differences in each track really add an extra layer to the sound, almost like a "chorus" type effect, but really natural sounding. also, another thing that really improved my sound was turning down the distortion. i made the mistake early on of recording with levels of distortion that were really high, like what i would use in live situations. but then when layering, it just sounded awful. i turned the distortion way down to the point where it barely sounded distorted at all, but then when layering all 4 tracks together, the sound was incredibly fat and heavy. of course if you solo one of the guitar tracks, it sounds weak, but when you add all 4, the small distortions all combine to form one big one. i think it works great.