How do you guys get your huge guitar sounds?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I usually mic a huge guitar with mics attached to a ladder. The hard part is getting the HUGE guitar through the door.

Here's me taking a HUGE guitar into the studio. You should have seen the amp on this one!

Stole my joke before I got to make it. And with a picture to boot.

Try a small low watt tube amp and turn it up till it sounds like it's going to explode. Always works for me but more for a Crazy Horse kind of huge than a metal kind of huge.

[concubine]

I have to agree with people who say to lay off the distortion pedals and rely more on the volume of the amp. It's really the sound of the amp breaking up at higher volumes that will give you a full, loud, distorted sound with more bite. Double-coil humbuckers help too, of course. It can be difficult to get an amp to break up naturally and still sound full and big and loud with a strat or a jazzmaster.

As for micing, I've had good success with an sm57 in front, an inch away from the grill cloth, and then a condenser (I've used an AT4050) right behind the cab, or out in front but at least a few feet away. The condenser should capture all the low end that the 57 doesn't get (especially if it's behind the cab), adding a definite bigness to the sound. It can also help to record a second track of the guitar part and then hard pan everything.

If you listen to a lot of 70s hard rock/heavy metal, often times the guitarists you hear are using something like an SG or Les Paul, and they're seriously driving the amp. And it always sounded huge.

Jeff

[lars savage]

I've had very good luck with this combo of mics on a variety of amps. Senn. 409, beyer M88, SM7. One each on a speaker (assuming you're micing a 4x12 cab) very close, all through the best preamps available, of course. mix all to one track, and play around with placement of each mic until phase seems good. Track once, then play around with the amp tone a bit so they don't sound identical, double, and hard pan. Save your 57 for the snare, it'll help it cut through that wall of guitars you've just created.

[literati]

I just laid some tracks for an old-school goth rock band where we doubled the guitars on my Danelectro baritone guitar run through my Traynor YCV-20. (Tuned in A)

Mixed in just a tad with the guitar, it's heavy as doom. Ooo, so nice.

Cheerio,
Literati,
occasionally known as Michael

[chemicalpink]

lots of good ideas here, like turning up the master and keeping
the gain knob at about 9 oclock to 12 oclock and using a twin
with somthing like a marshall, I have had good results with
2 marshalls and a twin in the middle with 2 rode LDC's in kind
of a wirdo x/y- one on top of the other the top one with the
capsule down pointed 90 degrees off axis one pointed left
the other right, about 5 to 10 feet back but you need a good
(warm) sounding room. if the room aint too hot sounding try
a figure-8 tube mic about 5 to 10 feet back double tracked
panned hard left and right and a small tube amp all fuzzed
out, down the middle. have fun and keep messing around.
if there is such a thing as rules recording guitars break them!!!!

[black mariah]

You're all fulla crap!

It's simple as fuck. First, get a good tone at the amp. How you get it doesn't matter in the least. Whether it's a VHT Ultra Lead and no pedals or a Metal Zone into a Crate practice amp, MAKE SURE IT SOUNDS GOOD BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT RECORDING IT. Shitty amp tone = shitty recorded tone. Period. How many shitty nu-metal bands have that crappy-ass compressed to fuck and back tone and use no pedals? Then you have shit like Godflesh that's insanely huge and it's nothing but a Metal Zone through a CLEAN Marshall. I rest my case.

After you've got a good amp tone, throw a mic in front of it. Try a few. Doesn't matter what you use, something will sound better than something else so go with whatever works best.

Then, lay down the left and right tracks. If it's still not heavy enough, add one down the middle. If it's still not heavy enough, find a different amp or mic or SOMETHING. Shit, most Pantera is just two tracks, and they're not even panned that hard.

[marqueemoon]

I like the sound of my Champ turned up just to the point where the speaker starts flappin' a little.

If I want distortion, I'll use my RAT pedal set just to add a little more grit and compression. I usually roll off most of the nasty rasp with the filter control.

I'm still experimenting with mics and the rest of the signal chain for that matter, but this is 90% of it.

[xiandishinger]

obviously what instruments, amps and mics u r using make a difference, but two things i think r just as important are playing style and panning

palm muting is metal, but too many tracks that aren't rhythmically tight sound like mud. try doing a track with palm muting and then play it again without palm muting, that way u get the rhythmic crunch and can still hear the damn notes

panning is really important- i like hard panned for rhythmic work, 10-2 for solos or melodic lines. if u r using multiple cabinets or multiple mics think about the balance of tonal color. (ie- don't put your trebly cabinet hard right, and your bassy cabinet hard left, unless u r going for that "unbalanced" sound)

right now i use a mesa triple rec through a marshall 2x12
i mic the cab w/ a sm57 right up next to the speaker edge (not center)
and a lrg diaphragm condenser back a little (2-3 ft) for some room sound (usually a at4040 or rode nt1a). usually i have no phase problems but watch for them. i then do a second take (doubling) w/ the same micing- just pan it out how u want it

a little reverb is good (adds to space and depth) but too much is washy
i actually prefer totally dry gtr sounds (for hard metal)

and of course if u have money- royer r121

[lars savage]

Oh yeah, I forgot... hit the tape so hard the needle doesn't even move...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

Oh yeah, I forgot... hit the tape so hard the needle doesn't even move...

sorry, i have to disagree with this. as cool as killing the tape sounds in theory, in practice it sounds bad. in my experience anyway. i'm all for hitting the tape hard, definitely, but tape distortion on guitars sounds crappy and distracting to me. i monitor in repro and push the input to where it starts to distort then back off a few db. the level where it starts to distort is well below where the meters are pinned. i have had cool results pinning the meters for certain vocal and bass tracks, but never on guitars.

just my 2 cents....

[lars savage]

While it's of course all relative to your machine's alignment, the part about the needles actually not moving was a bit of an exaggeration... I have had great luck with a hefty amount of tape compression on guitars recording on SM900 and 499. GP9 doesn't lend itself to this as well to my ears. Of course recording on a 2" 16 track also gives one plenty of tape to saturate, but I've also made this work on a 1/2" 8 track.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

cool. i use an otari 5050 1/2" 8 track. works a lot better with 456 than gp9, which could just be cause the machine's electronics can't push the gp9 hard enough without distorting, but i don't really think that's all of it. i think 456 is just cool. it just compresses in a very agreeable fashion. my machine's not even aligned totally correctly for it, i'm a hack, it still sounds good...

[lars savage]

I used to go back and forth seemlessly between 456 and 499 on my Tascam 38 without aligning... but that's a whole different thread. You may be right about the electronics not being able to handle high output without crapping out however... that does not lend itself to huge guitar sounds... Hack On!

[endofanera]

palm muting is metal, but too many tracks that aren't rhythmically tight sound like mud. try doing a track with palm muting and then play it again without palm muting, that way u get the rhythmic crunch and can still hear the damn notes

Also, if you add in a track of just the root notes of the chords being played, done with light palm-muting, to the above mix it can make for a huge gtr sound, but yeah, it has to line up rhythmically. Obviously that presents problems for some players.

[Piotr]

I built a guitar out back using an entire Douglas Fir, the strings are, like, 100 feet long and when I twang it my hair moves sideways!!!