Mixing heavy distortion guitar

[FatBassPlayer]

Hello again everyone.
Yesterday, I was trying to mix a heavy distortion guitar, the distortion is weak, sounds like a fart out of a tin can. Anyway, I push the fader up, but it starts to clip, so I bring it down a tad and I can't hear it anymore. And if I boost in the mid the distortion sounds even worse. And not only is it muddying things up but its taking it alot of room in the mix, and I just want it to come out of a small spot in the mix.
I was sweating left and right trying to figure out how to get the guitar to sit in the mix. And big guys like me sweat alot, even when we aren't doing much, needless to say I was drenched.
Anyway, does this happen to anyone(not the sweating but the guitar mixing)? I assume this is what mixing is about? I need a mix engineer don't I?

[gsqd]

You may have answered your own question with regards to a mix engineer!

Good mix engineers can perform what can only be described as sonic miracles on less than exellent recordings - it's what they're paid for!

The problem with mixing heavy guitars starts with recording them either badly or timbrally wrong for the song concerned.

Rough ideas:

The above advice is a very good starting point. Carve off the bottom end so that they don't create mud around the bass and kick. Also low pass them as much as you dare. Really arse kicking guitars seldom have much of anything over around 12k in a good rock mix. Also try putting some high mids into them to allow projection and power instead of volume. Powerful is almost always better than loud when it comes to a dense mix.

HTH.

GM

[seaneldon]

if your guitar track was poorly recorded, it will never sound good. the end. no one can change that without re-recording it.

[gibsonlp75]

you could also re-amp it and geek with it there...

[allencollins]

post a clip so we can hear it...............

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by seaneldon

if your guitar track was poorly recorded, it will never sound good. the end. no one can change that without re-recording it.

Completely correct. No amount of processing is going to bring a bad guitar sound back to life. You can't reamp if it's not a clean straight signal, running a bad distortion sound through a great amp won't really be the answer (it may help a bit though, but it's a bandaid for a large wound). Heavy guitar needs great rich organic tones, with lots of depth and layered tracks.

[Mike Caffrey]

Sounds like you've got a problem with the gainstaing of your entire mix. Pull everytihng 6-10dB, then you can boost the guitars.

You'll probably hear the whole mix open up too and you won't have to pull the master fader down likke I'm guessing you are now.

[NesNeedsGear]

mix with the monitors turned up a bit, keep the faders low..as mike pointed out.

sweep the eq on the guitars until you find the sweetest frequencies...

then do a little subtractive EQ on everything but the distorted guitar, starting with a wide Q....then slowly narrow the Q until you get it just right.

[picksail]

It was a glorious day when I serendipitously inserted the Phoenix Luster plug-in on a guitar track.

Try it and you'll what I'm talking about.

[norman_nomad]

Originally Posted by FatBassPlayer

Hello again everyone.
Yesterday, I was trying to mix a heavy distortion guitar, the distortion is weak, sounds like a fart out of a tin can. Anyway, I push the fader up, but it starts to clip, so I bring it down a tad and I can't hear it anymore. And if I boost in the mid the distortion sounds even worse. And not only is it muddying things up but its taking it alot of room in the mix, and I just want it to come out of a small spot in the mix.
I was sweating left and right trying to figure out how to get the guitar to sit in the mix. And big guys like me sweat alot, even when we aren't doing much, needless to say I was drenched.
Anyway, does this happen to anyone(not the sweating but the guitar mixing)? I assume this is what mixing is about? I need a mix engineer don't I?

We could all give you a billion "tricks" but it truly sounds like the guitar were poorly tracked... you can't "fix" too much distortion.

By chance was this a Mesa head?

[FatBassPlayer]

Once again, thank you for all your help.
I used a crate amp, not the best in the world. But now I have purchased the sansamp di box that allencolins recommended in a different post, and I am using amplitube 2 which sounds just great. I don't think I'll be micing up my amp anymore, or using my pod, as I don't have to proper mic, I'm used an sm 57.
I'm sorry I can't post the distortion, as I don't have a hosting site. And yes, I tried pulling all the faders down and did the finding of a sweet sounding frequency, and it worked well.

[84K]

Originally Posted by gibsonlp75

you could also re-amp it and geek with it there...

Is that a shep rack in your avatar?

[cortisol]

Heavy electric guitars are a strange beast! You can boost and cut with EQ and compress the beejeezus out of them and all you will get is another guitar sound! Its because E guitar is a synthetic non acoustic sound.

I have to work quite hard to get heavy guitars to work in a mix but I have saved myself lots of time by tracking great amps and cabs and by having reference songs that really show heavy guitar sounds working in a mix. If you have a few good ones going then you will find something with the instrumentation going similar to the mix you are working on and the guitar sound of the style the band plays.

I much prefere to mic a decent amp than use an emulator.

Peace,
cortisol

[Methlab]

In my experience from watching great engineers get great guitar sounds...the sound is there before hitting PTools. after that, a little multiband compression and HP and LP filtering is really all that is needed.

Also, reamping is always used just to be safe. Reamping is key because then you can switch out amps and EQ them to fit the mix..once again getting a great sound at the source. Every time I have gotten a bad guitar sound it is because I did not properly dial the right settings up on my amp. So, I guess the moral is..learn your amp and then you will get great guitar sounds.

[Analizemodmusic]

1. Can you start over with the guitar tracks somehow or are you stuck with what you've got?
2. If not, have you considered different panning techniques?

[C_F_H_13]

Here's what I do...it may work for you. First off, I track heavy guitars with 50% less distortion then you would normally use. I also track them alot lower than normal...like -10 to -15 in protools.

As far as pre-recorded tracks..here's some helpful stuff.

First off...find a good roll off point. I go as high as I can without the them getting thin...generally between 60-100 hz. Then I apply (SOMETIMES) this waves c4 patch that I got from andy sneaps forum. It doesn't work for everything...but I do find it quite useful alot. It's just compressing that pesky low mid area where you usually get the most build up of mud.

After I apply that compression (if it works) I find the next best thing is get the panning right. Don't just pan everything all the way out. Sometimes you will find that your guitars sound better about half way or +/- 50 in protools, and it'll translate better in mono.

After all this..if it doesn't sit well, I switch to a mono speaker (1 speaker!!! not 2 switched into mono) and start working on eq curves, with all the other instruments in. Generally a little boost at 80-90 hz...and a pretty good boost at 3.5k-4.8k....this is usually all I need.

Hope this helps.

[3rd world order]

about the only tricks i've ever come up with for reviving GTR tracks with any degree of regularity come from banging it thru either a chandler germanium pre (thru the DI and back) and/or off quantegy 456 and back... conversion thru a cranesong HEDD

just about anything else is throwing darts. plug-ins wont do much.. u might gain 5%

[Blindside]

Massey Tape Head anyone? I find that this plug helps beef up a guitar sound a bit. Kind of brings it out in the mix. Also I find some subtractive eq in the low frequencies can do some good. I like the vt3 for this. Maybe not for your problem though.

[Gonzalo]

+1 on the C4 trick from Andy Sneap

I work mostly with metal bands and I always use it.
Cheers

[FatBassPlayer]

CFH13, thank you so much for taking the time to cut and paste that image. I don't have any wave products, though I'm looking into getting the musicians bundle. But I think i can apply something like that using a different plugin.
And to everyone else thanks also. Here is what I have so far, I'm just attaching a snippet of the tone I have so far, layered with drums. I will be putting non-cookie monster vocals in later this week.

[BOWIE]

Recording electric guitar is something that's really hard to screw up...
As someone said earlier, your entire mix is probably flawed.
You can't always "fix it in the mix".