Advice on recording clean guitars?

[TheDarkProject]

In doing some home recordings, I have no trouble getting a nice crunchy rhythm sound and haunting leads, but I'm not having much success with the clean sounds. They tend to end up either buried in the mix, or floating conspicuously over the top, with no middle ground. Generally what I'm attempting are arpeggios over heavy rhythm guitars, such as old Paradise Lost or Katatonia might use, but they don't quite work.

Does anybody have any hints on what I can try to fix this? I have most effects at my disposal but obviously there's an infinite number of things I could try, and I've not got an infinite amount of time or patience!

 

[Pita Bread]

How many guitar tracks do you use for rhythm?

 

[TheDarkProject]

Just 2 at the moment.

 

[Bryant]

If you play some failry aggressive metal, it is common to boost the lows and highs when playing. On a clean sound, you don't have the "fullness" of the harmonics (not the same type of harmonics you purposely play) that are created by the squared off sound wave created by overdriving the tubes or using a pedal. Your sound will still "cut through" even with that equalization. When using a clean tone, you must put your guitar squarely between the lows of the kick drums and bass and highs of the hi-hat/cymbals. The best way to do that is by bringing the mids way up and dropping the highs and lows. This sounds like shit when you ae playing by yourself because you don't have the bass and hi-hat to give the full audio range, but on recording it does sound good.
One other thing is to record with a stereo chorus. When you are playing faster stuff, the listener is grabbed not only by your guitar tone, but by your rythm as well. On a clean (which is normally slower) tone, the listener is much more aware of the guitar tone (which is one reason why you don't like it) and one of the best ways to make the tone more interesting is to give some stereo seperation. If you don't have a stereo chorus, you can configure a delay left to right.


Bryant

 

[Bryant]

I also forgot to mention your guitar. Some guitars hate to play clean. I have a 1990 Peavey Vandenburg. The pickups (HB bridge and single coil at neck) were so hot, they just didn't sound good trying to create a clean tone. Since I never used the neck pick-up, I replaced the super hot rail single coil pick-up for what is more or less a strat style single coil and the clean sound improved dramatically. The guitar tech that put it in for me was actually shocked that I felt the pickup was "too hot" and did the work for free if I gave him the rail, but I had no use for it and have never missed it to this day.

Bryant

 

[markspaul]

It depends on the guitar you`re using.I would say that a FENDER Strat or Tele with some CHORUS would do the trick.

 

[TheDarkProject]

Thanks guys... turning down the bass, turning up the mids, ditching the double-humbucker Warlock for the Strat copy, using the neck single-coil, and a reverb/chorus mix have certainly improved it significantly.

 

[Bryant]

Thanks guys... turning down the bass, turning up the mids, ditching the double-humbucker Warlock for the Strat copy, using the neck single-coil, and a reverb/chorus mix have certainly improved it significantly.

Cool !! Glad to hear it is working for you. You can aslo put a more mild-mannered pickup in your Warlock's neck.

Bryant

 

[7 Dying Trees]

Another fun thing to do is to try and put a coil tap switch on any guitar with humbuckers, basically if you either do one coil tap (push pull pot) for each humbucker it'll open up more sounds etc. Single coils = win for clean sounds, as is adding a small smattering of reverb. Chorus is good, bit it's much more fun to play two/multiple tracks and get the effect that way.