Tips for my guitar tone / mix

Wastelands

New Metal Member
Jan 29, 2011
6
0
1
Hi guys. First post here. I'll start off by thanking the regulars around here for the great info I've come up on in the topics here. Fantastic info that has given me lots of ideas for mixes. Bravo! :D

Right now I am working on a black metal project and after some comparative listening I am realizing my guitar mixes sound rather weak and buried. I'm running a schecter blackjack 6 with Seymour Duncan jb/'59 pickups into a line6 toneport ux2 to reaper using guitar rig 4. I have also tried the lepou plugins and 8505 all with various cab impulses and I seem to have the same issue. I've also tried tone matching with curveEQ, that sounded really bad. I'll upload my "guinea pig" track here:

http://soundcloud.com/cutsman-1/astral-imprisonment-2

Next to a nice mix like this, it sounds totally weak.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA-TLekogvk&feature=related[/ame]

I realize I am not going to get a pure, clean studio sound out of the crappy equipment I use but I feel like I might be missing something. To my ear it sounds like my tone lacks body, and that a lot of the frequencies are just empty noise. If I strip the noise, I am left with a tiny muddy low-mid sounding guitar. Is it some piece of my gear or software, the limitations of ampsim stuff, or... god forbid.. are my EQ jobs shit? :loco: Any thoughts would be appreciated :worship:
 
It's basically got a significant cut to the highs and lows with some additional cuts in the highs where I found extremely harsh frequencies. When I get home later today I can take a picture of the eq if that would help. There is an extremely light amount of reverb on the guitars to add a roomy vibe. I made sure it didn't add any unnecessary noise to the tone.