Compressing the guitar solos

[blackcom]

Do you guyes compress the guitar solos? Is so, what kind of ratios, do you set the treshold to compress constantly, any multiband compression, how do you do it?

 

[Kazrog]

That really depends on a lot of things - the player, the tone, the solo, the dynamics (if any) etc. I usually have some compression on my lead tone itself, or I'm using high enough gain that it is an intriniscally compressed sound. If I really need to "smack" it in the face of the mix I'll throw an L1 and/or a C4 on it though. There aren't really "magic settings," it's all relative and I usually just experiment.

EQ is everything with solos, and I believe Andy once said here that solos should be EQ'd similarly to lead vocals. That approach has worked well for me recently...