I know this subject has kinda been beaten to death, buried, exhumed, and beaten some more, but today I want to talk a little about recording heavy sounding guitars. This is a topic that is largely like the use of salt in cooking: everyone has their own tastes.
However, regardless of our specific tastes, there are a few techniques we can all use to make our guitars sound just a bit better.
1. Turn down your gain!
When we think of metal, progressive, or even hard rock guitar riffs, we usually think of tube-melting distortion coming from high-gain amplifiers with their volume cranked to 11. This is often the perfect formula for great tone in a live setting. In the studio, the game changes. While in a live setting, our teenage alter ego tells us we want to crush the internal organs of the first 50 rows with devastating volume, in the studio, the goal is a focused, punchy, articulated tone. The best way to increase articulation and focus is to cut your gain down, possibly as low as 50% or even less!
It may sound counter-intuitive, but try it out! I was skeptical until I tried it.
2. Add more midrange!
One of the very common characteristics of heavy guitar music is a crunch guitar sound with the mid-range frequencies (~250-500Hz) cut by 3 - 12dB. It's a very tight, machine-gun-like tone that is perfect for playing brutal metal riffs. The problem is that scooping out the mids means getting rid of the frequency range where the bulk of the guitar's frequency range lies. Lower than 250Hz is the realm of bass guitar, kick drum, and low toms. Higher than 500 Hz is the realm of snare attack, synthesizer pads, cymbals, and wailing guitar solos.
If nothing else, reduce the amount of "scooping" in the mids, and your guitar parts will instantly be more "present" in the mix.
3. Play it again, Sam!
Boosting the mids and cutting the gain can unfortunately have the result of thinning out your tone a bit. An instant "thickener" is to double each of the rhythm guitar parts, and then pan each part to the left and right of the stereo field. I don't like to do a full 100% left & right -- more like a 50-75% left & right so that there's a little bit of overlap in the center.
4. Avoid eviction!
With tube/valve amps, the sweetest tones are produced by an amp that is turned up VERY loud. I have a Marshall amp that is so loud that even with earplugs, I couldn't handle turning it up past 3. If I had gone any louder, I'm betting a SWAT team would have shown up. What to do when you have a home studio? Speaker cabinet emulation!
My Mesa Boogie Mark 5:25 amp comes with a speaker cabinet emulator output built right into the amp itself. There are also a number of third-party devices that can sit between your speaker cabinet and amp head providing the same sort of emulated output. Both Mesa Boogie and Suhr have very well-rated devices. My entire album "Legacy" was recorded using the Mesa Boogie "CabClone" port from my amp, and I've had quite a number of positive comments on my tone.
The emulators enable you to crank up the volume on the amp and not have to worry about microphones, room acoustics/sound-proofing, or trips in the back of a police car.
IMPORTANT: With tube/valve amps, it is essential that your amp have a properly rated speaker cabinet plugged in whenever the amp is powered on. You can severely damage your amp by powering it on without a proper load on the speaker cabinet output. That said, many/most of the cabinet emulators on the market today provide an appropriate load for your amp, so often you don't even need to plug the cabinet in, giving you the option to record in near silence.
Here's a live play-through of my song "The Descent" from my album "Legacy" (available here). This recording uses all of these tips. I played the guitar part three times (left, center, right), and the video features me playing the third time through. Enjoy!
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