Doubling up guitars

[martyfireball]

hi, just started recording the guitar tracks for my bands new EP, but i've really noticed the differences in me and the other guitars playing style. This leads to some parts (especially single note riffs/licks) sounding as if they are very slightly flanged.
I then thought i'd record both guitar tracks myself but i can still hear this effect, although not as much. I really concentrated on making sure all the slides, accents and vibrato was the same on both tracks but it's still evident.

(guitar was recorded into PC via Terratec phase88, using sonar 2.2xl via j-station, with different sounds for each guitar and panned heavily left and right)

Do any of you guys experience this or are we just too sloppy to be in a metal band!!!

 

[Impy]

Try inverting (phase reverse) one of the tracks and see if it gets better, phasing can occur when you double any instrument and inverting one of the tracks should fix that.

 

[Andy Sneap]

one word...tuning!

and yes, you probably are to sloppy, leave it to the producer to play.

If your styles are drastically different, take it in turns to play different parts (who ever plays that bit the best) or play your own songs as you usually play your own riffs tighter by nature anyway.

 

[martyfireball]

cheers for the quick replies.
i check the tuning of the guitars all the time when i'm recording and we're both using ibanez's with edge trems which stay in tune pretty good (and yes they are new strings! ).
I tried the switching the phase and it didn't seem to help.

The producer IS playing the guitar!

I'll give it another blast soon and double check all your points,
~I was also thinking, could it be down to some sort of latency (my ASIO panel tells me it's 5.8ms) between the foldback and the recording, although I did try moving one of the tracks back and forth by a few ms and it only made it worse!

 

[daver]

I find this one of the great benefits of recording as opposed to playing live, really tightens up you rhythm playing. I think it's just a case of a lot of takes / practise when you haven't been in the studio for a while, vibrato / pinch harmonics being the hardest to nail down.

Good luck!

 

[Andy Sneap]

you can get it sometimes when the sounds (especially low end) phase together, maybe worth doing your second take through a different rig, or just a slightly different mic placement

 

[2dark]

Assuming that you are an experienced guitar player and you rehearsed properly,
then those things occur when using the same guitar setup (like Andy said) for doubling.
Since you're using a Terratec card I would definetly check for the ASIO latency.
I use one at home for some rough demos and those cards are very bad on the ASIO side.

And also don't try doubling when you're having a bad day. If you still try it, it can make
your day even worse. (I got lots of bads days during the last recording and it took me
forever to nail it).
During recoding I usually try pretend to myself that I'm playing in front of thousands of people and having a great stage sound ;-)
Works for me, but everyone has to leave to room 'cause I start to make 'funny faces'.