Layering/Double tracking guitars

[legionserial]

Recording using 4 guitars, 2 left, 2 right. However I have just the 1 guitar, and now have 2 amps, as oppposed to just the one I had before.

A question popped into my head, what would it be 'better' to do? To have 2 tracks of, say, amp 1 panned left, and 2 tracks of amp 2 panned right, or one of each amp left and one of each amp right....if that makes sense.

 

[JB1979]

I think it depends on what you are going for. If the 2 amps sound completely different, and you want the listener to be able to pick up on 2 individual amp sounds, I'd do both tracks of amp 1 hard left and both tracks of amp 2 hard right, but if you're just trying to make a unified guitar sound that is full and thick, you could do one of each amp on each side.

You could also tweak the controls on the amps for each individual track (ex. track 1 = amp 1 w/ high end accentuated panned left, track 2 = amp 1 with highs rolled off and more gain panned left et c.).

 

[danny.guitar]

What kind of sound are you going for?

Are you using distortion?

...

 

[cephus]

Honestly, I think that makes it sound mushy. I have had more luck using a single voice panned hard L/R than trying to mix a few tones. But I played the part once routed through three amps at the same time. Not quite the same as traditional doubling where you play the part multiple times.

If you try it and get decent results, please share how you did it.

 

[tc4b]

You could also tweak the controls on the amps for each individual track (ex. track 1 = amp 1 w/ high end accentuated panned left, track 2 = amp 1 with highs rolled off and more gain panned left et c.).

I often do that with only one amp, just EQ the layers during the producing stage. I am amble to make the guitars as prominent or, um, not-prominent as need be. Then again, I don't go for the "wall of guitar" type phenomenon.

 

[metalhead28]

I'm pretty sure you do metal if memory serves me, and in that case the most common practice would be to pan one track from each amp either way, giving you a balanced sound for the guitars.
That's assuming that you are playing the same things and you want to just fatten up the sound. You wouldn't normally want a totally different sound from left to right.