Distored guitar
Lower the pickup that's giving you the blended together sound.
*sigh*... I probably should explain why...
OK, so I'm assuming your recording distorted guitar... One thing to remember is - Distortion at it's heart is compression. Compression is an effect that you apply to sounds to cut or roll off the transients. A transient are the overtones and such of the fundamental frequencies. It also gives an instrument it's character which allows you to tell the difference between the strum of a guitar and a piano. Also, notice that when playing using a clean setting, you can hear every note, and that's because there is enough head room (room before a signal starts to clip) that all the transients are left intact which gives each string/note it's own character.
OK, so distortion originated when people turned their old tube amps up WAY to loud... To the point where the tubes in the amp were pushed past their limit and what happened was, the the signal was so loud and the tubes were driven to hard that they began to "clip". The reason they called it "clipping" is because the tubes would actually roll of the tops of the transients of the signal they were amplifying causing the signal to "distort" while compressing the signal. OK, so remember when I said that clean sounds sound crystal clear and it was because the transients were left intact? well with distorted guitar tone, the compression eats tops and bottoms of the transients leaving only the fundamental frequencies of each note which is why it sounds "blended" together.
OK, that said, the reason you should lower your pickup height is because a guitar pickup is essentially a microphone. The closer a mic/pickup is to the source it's "hearing", the higher the output will be. So the closer you have your pickup to your strings, the stronger the output will be resulting in the input of your amp being driven that much harder and distorting that much more (which as mentioned earlier, causes that "blended" effect). Pickup height and playing method determine the output you're getting from your guitar, for instance when you play soft, there isn't much energy coming from your strings giving your pickup less to "capture" while playing harder gets more energy coming from your strings driving your pickup even more. That's called dynamics. Use that to your advantage to achieve a certain sound/feeling.
Most of the time when people come here looking for "that metal/rock/distorted sound" they're telling us that they have the gain dimed out (turned all the way up to 10) and they have the mids turned down (aka "scooped", "the graphic EQ smiley face"). The problem with this is that (as I said before) too much distortion kills your sound. You'd be surprised at how little gain all your favorite guitar hero's used when recording your favorite album. also, the guitar by nature is a mid-range instrument, you need those mid frequencies for the guitar to be heard in a mix. You also don't generally wanna crank your lows and highs way up either, the reason you don't wanna do this is because while you may have your mids up, cranking the highs and lows up even further is just gonna give you the same problem as having your mids scooped.
You should start with the eq on your amp (assuming it's only a 3-band EQ) at 12 o'clock (straight up) and get a pair of head phones on and sit in front of your amp while moving the mic around to try to get the sound your looking for. Overly EQ'd tracks/tones sound fake and artificial compared to a naturally EQ'd sound. Use your mic, the room, the speaker, the cab, and the guitar to naturally eq your sound. Everything in the universe has it's own resonant frequency, even the room you're recording in so use that to your advantage. I imagine that there is a site on the web that can tell you your rooms frequency response based on it's dimension. If and when you can't achieve that sound naturally then you should start to EQ accordingly
Another tip for good guitar tone would be to get those power amp sections cooking! Good guitar tone comes from cranked amps, just like back in the day when musical distortion was first discovered. Not only does a cranked power section add to your tone but it puts some power into your speakers. The thing that you're looking for in your speakers is "speaker excursion" and "cabinet involvement". Speaker excursion is when your speakers start to move back and forth due to excessive SPL (sound pressure level) in sympathy to your playing. This is when things like palm mutes and your playing dynamics really come to life and this is where your speakers really become a part of the equation. The harder you play the more your speakers move in sympathy. Cabinet involvement does the same thing, this is when the construction material, size, and build of your cabinet really come into play.
This is also why you don't want to crank your bass frequencies on your amp head/ combo amp. Palm mutes come to life when playing with speaker excursion cause when you hit that notes the speaker really pushes some air putting emphasis and power into the sound. When you have the bass cranked along with your master volume to achieve that excursion, the bass frequencies are way overdone when you hit that palm mute causing the speakers to excurse too much. That can be bad. That can cause your speakers to "fart" or some other ugly word/sound. not only that but the real bass frequencies should be taken up by the bass guitar in a mix. Some meat in your guitar tone is all well and good but the bass guitar isn't called a "BASS" guitar for nothing. Something I've learned is that the bass guitar/bass tone plays a big role in what you might think the guitar tone is. They should compliment and work off of each other for something really special.
Anyways, I hope this has helped.
I was listening to a song I recorded and noticed it, and was just curious if anyone else has encountered similar problems. Mainly, I'm recording hard rock rhythms. I've been recording through my effects processor rather than miking an amp and I use a lot of palm muting and alternate picking... so I'm expecting a "gallop".
