Double Tracking Guitars: Mono or Stereo?

[Pantomime]

Hi there.

Brand new to this forum, and brand new to recording. Both excited and stressed about getting started.

I did a quick search of the forums to see if my question had already been asked, and I couldn't quite find exactly what I was looking for.

When double tracking guitars, should you record both of the tracks in stereo, then pan one left and one right?

Or, should you record both of the tracks in mono, then pan one left and one right?

For whatever reason, my brain is telling me that doing so in stereo would only essentially give half of the guitar sound on each side. But maybe there's a benefit to that that I'm missing as well.

Once that's figured out, my other question would be: Should the pan be 100% left and right, or only partially split on each track?

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide.

EDIT: I'm running Pro Tools 12 HD as my DAW if that helps, and am on a MacBook Pro running OS X Yosemite 10.10.4.

[musicman691]

Record guitars on mono tracks and pan as needed. This applies whether you're double-tracking or not. And you don't necessarily need to hard pan left and right either - that could leave a nasty hole in the middle of the sound. That's unless you're going for some kind of special effect.

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Record guitars on mono tracks and pan as needed. This applies whether you're double-tracking or not. And you don't necessarily need to hard pan left and right either - that could leave a nasty hole in the middle of the sound. That's unless you're going for some kind of special effect.

EDIT: Still me, just changed my Profile Name to "Snowflake". "Pantomime" was the first thing that came to mind but it sounded pretentious.

Interesting, thanks for the update.

Definitely a complete beginner, so I'll have to try out hard-panning and soft-panning for myself and see what works for the sound I'm looking for. Maybe I'll even try quad-tracking, and have the first two guitars be hard panned, and the second two brought in a little bit.

Just to clarify though, guitar tracks should always be mono?

Why is that out of curiosity? Are there benefits and drawbacks to stereo / mono recording guitars?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Snowflake

EDIT: Still me, just changed my Profile Name to "Snowflake". "Pantomime" was the first thing that came to mind but it sounded pretentious.

Interesting, thanks for the update.

Definitely a complete beginner, so I'll have to try out hard-panning and soft-panning for myself and see what works for the sound I'm looking for. Maybe I'll even try quad-tracking, and have the first two guitars be hard panned, and the second two brought in a little bit.

Just to clarify though, guitar tracks should always be mono?

Why is that out of curiosity? Are there benefits and drawbacks to stereo / mono recording guitars?

Guitar is, by definition, a mono instrument. There have been attempts at stereo guitars but that's not been true stereo but just splitting the pickups to separate outputs. You gain nothing by using stereo tracks and it can mess with imaging which is ugly. Remember that there is no such thing as panning on a full-width stereo signal, only balance. To pan a stereo signal you need to narrow the signal.

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Guitar is, by definition, a mono instrument. There have been attempts at stereo guitars but that's not been true stereo but just splitting the pickups to separate outputs. You gain nothing by using stereo tracks and it can mess with imaging which is ugly. Remember that there is no such thing as panning on a full-width stereo signal, only balance. To pan a stereo signal you need to narrow the signal.

Interesting, good to know.

For other Stereo instruments that's a good point, it's balance as opposed to full panning unless you narrow the signal.

That being said, it might be kind of interesting to record two tracks of a Stereo based instrument, and balance each one to each separate side. Though it would have to be a unique playable Stereo instrument and not just a MIDI Plug-In I suppose, and I'm not sure what those would even be.

Anyway long story short, I'm sure that I'll have more questions in the future.

However this helps to sort out the stuff I was originally interested in when making this thread.

Thanks for the replies.

[john1192]

record in M/S from a few feet away along with that Sm57 close ... this way you have the Mono Signal and the Sides - so you can add the room (air) around your mono guitars .. that is 3 tracks for electric guitar / 2 tracks for acoustic guitars or percussion .. etc ..

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by john1192

record in M/S from a few feet away along with that Sm57 close ... this way you have the Mono Signal and the Sides - so you can add the room (air) around your mono guitars .. that is 3 tracks for electric guitar / 2 tracks for acoustic guitars or percussion .. etc ..

Who are you responding to? No one here mentioned anything about an SM57. But as long as we're on the subject of mid-side you're going to need a mic with a figure 8 pattern along with the proper software decoding to make the method work.

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by john1192

record in M/S from a few feet away along with that Sm57 close ... this way you have the Mono Signal and the Sides - so you can add the room (air) around your mono guitars .. that is 3 tracks for electric guitar / 2 tracks for acoustic guitars or percussion .. etc ..

Originally Posted by musicman691

Who are you responding to? No one here mentioned anything about an SM57. But as long as we're on the subject of mid-side you're going to need a mic with a figure 8 pattern along with the proper software decoding to make the method work.

Yeah I agree, I'm a bit confused.

Thanks for that info on mic recording john1192, and also the extra details while we're on the subject musicman691 respectively. However you're also right, that wasn't quite what I was looking for just yet.

I'm going to be doing direct line-in recording through an Axe FX II XL+ as it stands for the time being, however over time learning proper microphone and cabinet details will be very beneficial to me in the future! However, as for right now, I'm doing a direct line-in signal, so I don't need to be asking those sorts of questions *just* yet at least.

Thanks very much anyway though of course for all of the help and info.

[gutterfly]

Eleven rack (or axe fx etc) sounds killer in stereo when using any effects, either built in or run through the fx loop.