Depth and 3-dimensional guitars?

[abyssofdreams]

Well, most (if not all) record a cab with a mic pretty close, leaving almost no room ambience so I was wondering, how come professional recordings have soo much depth and dimension to it's guitar tracks?

Layering guitars helps and panning them differently...I know that.
But how about some EQ to help the guitars breathe? Some EQ boosts above 8k would help?

Any other tricks to give guitars a sort of deeper/wider sense of space?

 

[Nebulous]

From what I've seen, getting the right mic placement and not rellying too much on EQ is the best thing for guitar tracks to sound big and "3D". I'm saying this because alot of the time I'll mic a cab, it will sound ok, then the EQ which I think will make it sound better just starts to make it sound really lifeless and flat.

 

[Ermz]

Quality mics/pres/converters always help, along with a good tone and decent microphone placement. However, most of the time some low-mid control is needed to really get the guitars to open up and breathe more. What I've found in the past was that controlling the low mids the right way helps the guitars sit a lot better and lend itself to a generally more open mix. Then at times there's also controlling the presence frequencies around 3.3kHz. Altering these out is like a magical 'vocal up, vocal down' slider. Although I do tend to subscribe to the school of 'don't be a pussy with the EQ' when it comes to guitars in particular.

 

[gorath23]

Yeah, I find especially with V30 Cabs you'll always get a nasty spike between 2-4khz that tends to overpower a mix. I normally have a fairly wide cut around there and it really opens out the sound and allows everything to breathe a little better.

 

[Seizure.]

hhahaha, i almost allways boost 3 khz on guitartracks

 

[AKoppenheffer]

Using two mics together usually cancel out the nasty frequencies. Kind of complimenting eachother. At least from my experience.