Clean guitar compression

Trevoire520

Member
Mar 24, 2007
5,053
26
48
Fife, Scotland
Hey guys, how do you normally go about controlling the dynamic's of clean guitars in your mixes? It's something that I sometimes struggle with, especially with less than perfect guitar players playing fast clean parts.

I've found that compression isn't always very effective, set it too fast and it get's real harsh and distorted, set it too slow and you miss the transients. And it's quite difficult to get right with automation.

What do you guys normally do?

Stage your compression slow>medium>fast? Maybe with lower thresholds and ratio's than normal?
Use paralell compression?
Chop the riff up and apply audiosuite gain to even it out? (<that's something that I've found quite useful on tapping parts, maybe it'll work well here?)
Or is it just a case of bitchslapping the guitarist and getting him to pick more consistently?

Looking forward to hearing how you guys approach this.
 
If I need to I'll put a compressor before the amp. Generally I'll use a Carl Martin compressor pedal.