Quad tracked guitars are busting my balls

[JoergieN]

Normally when I track my own rhythm shit I just track it twice, and after tweaking my DIs, I end up with a tone that I'm happy with. But when I use some of your quad tracked DIs, I'm not sure what to do with them all. At first I tried using completely different presets on all 4 guitar tracks, tweaked them a little, and ended up with a very nice thick tone. But although the tone was nice and thick, it was not the tone that I really like. So I decided to try using 2 different presets on each track and then pan them hard left and right. It still sounded nice and thick but now all of a sudden I lost clarity in the overall tone. Any tips or advice? Should I just keep working on it until I'm happy with the tone or should I just stick to tracking only 2 guitars? I just feel like using more than two guitar saps the clarity of the overall tone

 

[Tommy Gun]

My approach:

Gtr Left 1 & Gtr Right 1, pan hard to each side, use the same amp for each, and get your primary gtr tone from those.

Gtrs Left and Right "2", pan around 75-80% Left and Right, use a thicker tone from something like a dual rec, and keep it relatively in the background on faster parts. During mid-paced and slower riffing, bring these Gtrs up only to about 4-8db below your primary guitar tracks, using them just to add some body.

 

[egan.]

I think that what Tommy said is pretty normal. I typically try to dial in a primary tone I want and then use a secondary to additional qualities I want. I've never used more than two different tones on quad-tracking though.
Recently I did a mix where I reversed the amps roles on each side and that was pretty cool for a more old school guitarist per side effect:
<100% Amp1Tk1 -----Amp2Tk1 100%>
and the 4dB-ish below those:
<75% Amp2Tk2 -----Amp1Tk2 75%>

Play around with it. For normal modern stuff you want it to sound wide but it's important for it to sound balanced as well.

 

[Jormyn]

I'm a naughty boy and use the same tone for all four tracks. My preference is for each part to be 100 to one side, 80 to the other, so that when there's a harmony section the guitars still sound fairly balanced across the stereo image.

It really comes down to the material and the style, though.

 

[crillemannen]

The thing is to get 2 tones that complement each other. One can be little bit brighter and thinner, which the other one is a bit thicker and has less treble.