I love tracking with the good guys, it's a lot of fun, jokes and creative work. Even if they lack skills, it's a great thing to help them to perform better. I always get acquainted with the band BEFORE we make a deal, so I know that they're ok and most probably it will be fun to work with them.
Sometimes I'd propose drummer to play less complex kick part and concentrate on hands (sometimes play just hands). Or playing something way too complicated slower. Anyway, taking hundred takes is not a performance demonstration. It's the fucking probability theory
The same with bass players, guitarists and singers - lots of nice methods to make them sound better - chosing different picks, dampening the unused strings, giving advice on proper picking/playing fingers, singing along with the vocalist, etc etc etc. Fun!
Guys find out a lot about tuning, proper timing. And I'm getting more experienced in working with musicians.
One more interesting thing is optimizing tracking for upcoming editing. I love tracking just DI for bass or even guitars (sometimes using ampsims for monitoring) and only after I've made all the editing and all the tracks are in perfect order, I do reamping. Sure if we're talking about tough players who easily make their way through the track, this approach has no sense.
Tracking great musicians is as pleasant, as mixing projects, tracked at our own studios. But imagine someone has brought you the shitty project: guitars without DI, cheap speakers, spongy drive without screamer, wierd miking. Bass only miked, tuned sharp, dead strings and noisy as fuck. Overheads mocking you: you can replace kick, snare and toms, but you are impotent against our canny crashes, overpowering hat and tiny ride. Vocals are already oversaturated and autotuned the wierdest possible way. I think mixing it will suck even more than tracking poor performances.
