Splitting one guitar to two amps vs tracking twice with two different guitar/amps

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by mobius.media

I know Chris Dugen said Green Day main rhythm parts were tracked twice per side, each time with a different guitar/amp combo.

On the other hand, with AFI, things were tracked once per side, each with one guitar per side split to two amps each time.

Just wondering if any of you guys have any thoughts on the relative merits of these two general approaches with guitar or how you most often like to handle it.

Thanks.

And big thanks to Jeff Tomei, Joe McGrath, Chris Dugen, Billy Bush, and Chris Testa for pitching in throughout the forum. It wouldn't have been the same without you guys!

The advantage of using one guitar and splitting into two amps is that you have completely different tones from two different amps, usually one cleaner and the 2nd with more overdrive, and because it's one performance, you don't have to worry about it getting messy sounding because the guitar player can't play it exactly the same each time. But you have to be careful, because you can run into phase problems and impedance issues, which can really mess with the sound.
If you're tracking with each amp separately, the guitarist has to be really, really good! Even the slightest difference in each performance, whether it's timing or tuning, will start to make the part mushy and washy.

I've used both methods in the studio, whatever works best for the band.

[andersmv]

That's interesting. Do you approach things differently depending on if you are doubling guitar parts vs. blending different sounds?

Example- When you take a DI'ed guitar and split it to two different amps, do you generally blend the two (or more) sounds together and deal with it as one sound later or are you taking the two different amps and treating them as two different tracks when it comes to mix time?

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by andersmv

That's interesting. Do you approach things differently depending on if you are doubling guitar parts vs. blending different sounds?

Example- When you take a DI'ed guitar and split it to two different amps, do you generally blend the two (or more) sounds together and deal with it as one sound later or are you taking the two different amps and treating them as two different tracks when it comes to mix time?

We usually record two different tracks, clean and distorted, and when I like the balance, we'll bounce them down to one track...sometimes right away, sometimes right before the mix. I like to commit before the mix, one less decision to make.