this may end up being a very basic question, but it's been plaguing me for some time now and wanted to get some opinion and perspective from the rest of this very educated and experienced group.
having read a number of articles here (and some of those ya'll've linked elsewhere), i've acquired a decent handle on technique for setting up stereo microphones to record the output from a guitar amp. while any technique will generally need improvement from time to time, i'm fairly happy with the results i've been getting in seeking out the sweet spots.
in the more heavy rock environment, something i've always been a fan of is recording two separate rhythm guitar tracks with tonality and equalization differences then panning them hard left and hard right. this worked really, really well when i was working with single microphones on the amp and the sound i acquired was pretty solid.
i've changed over to the use of stereo microphone usage and now i'm not so sure what to think. if i listen to the single guitar in stereo, hard panned left and right, it sounds very rich and full. if i take the second rhythm guitar recording and layer one on top of the other, it gets moderately muddy. if i take and pan all of the one type to the left and all of the other type to the right, i seem to lose some of the magic that made the stereo recording useful in the first place.
i've experimented with taking Guitar A and panning L100 (full left) R50 (half right) and Guitar B into L50 and R100 and variations thereof (L100 L80 Guitar A, R80 R100 Guitar B, etc). i'm still not getting the same decent sound that i used to be able to get with single mic'd guitars.
any suggestions in terms of what i may be missing in this arena? do i need to tweak phase in a way i hadn't thought of, modify equalization somehow, adjust volume of some of the panned tracks, or something i just plain cannot think of due to inexperience in this realm?
thanks a bunch!
-= george =-
having read a number of articles here (and some of those ya'll've linked elsewhere), i've acquired a decent handle on technique for setting up stereo microphones to record the output from a guitar amp. while any technique will generally need improvement from time to time, i'm fairly happy with the results i've been getting in seeking out the sweet spots.
in the more heavy rock environment, something i've always been a fan of is recording two separate rhythm guitar tracks with tonality and equalization differences then panning them hard left and hard right. this worked really, really well when i was working with single microphones on the amp and the sound i acquired was pretty solid.
i've changed over to the use of stereo microphone usage and now i'm not so sure what to think. if i listen to the single guitar in stereo, hard panned left and right, it sounds very rich and full. if i take the second rhythm guitar recording and layer one on top of the other, it gets moderately muddy. if i take and pan all of the one type to the left and all of the other type to the right, i seem to lose some of the magic that made the stereo recording useful in the first place.
i've experimented with taking Guitar A and panning L100 (full left) R50 (half right) and Guitar B into L50 and R100 and variations thereof (L100 L80 Guitar A, R80 R100 Guitar B, etc). i'm still not getting the same decent sound that i used to be able to get with single mic'd guitars.
any suggestions in terms of what i may be missing in this arena? do i need to tweak phase in a way i hadn't thought of, modify equalization somehow, adjust volume of some of the panned tracks, or something i just plain cannot think of due to inexperience in this realm?
thanks a bunch!
-= george =-