How do you get OH's and GTRs sounding tight

[RingoFire]

I found out that the roomshape is important. I used to have terrible cymbal sounds in my old studio. I got a strong and very short reflection resulting in a bad doubling of the higher frequencies. when I moved in my new rooms the problem went away without changing mics, micplacements, preamps. the old studio was 4 x 6.5 x 2.5 meters. the new one is 6.5 x 11.5 x 4 meters. if I dont like the sound of the overhead I just play around with the distance of the OH-mics.

I get cool results recording complete lineups even with the loudest hardcore metal bands (playing the cheapest cymbals...)! For OHeads I use Neumann M 58 for guitars sennheiser e609 or shure SM57. In the mix I lowpass guitars at 8khz, OHeads hipass around 1000Hz. the main problem during live recording for me is cymbals in the guitar mics, not guitars in the overheads.

upgrading to HD with 96i/o was a big improvement ...

a good drumbus compressor (I use Avalon 747 or BSS with deesser and peaklimiter) smoothens up things too

hope that helps...

ringo

[ixnys]

wow you hipass cymbals at 1khz...So far my song and mix sound pretty tight. Sometimes it's hard to judge what the drums will sound like until you get all the rest of the instruments in the mix. Now the cymbals sound good.

I was fooling around with the OH tracks and EQibng them. It seemed if I narrow Q'd and boosted anything above 1khz I heard annoying whistling sounds. Pretty ugly. I didn't know if I should have notched those frequencies out. Just leaving the EQ flat was the best. But that got me wondering if it's unusual to have those whistling frequencies coming from the cymbals if you boost in the higher frequencies.

[RolandK]

Take this with a grain of salt because I just started recording acoustic drums.... maybe try putting up some blankets around your kit to soak up some of the high end? If your room is a box (like mine) the reflections off the walls will kill you. I built a few hollow doors with bases and acoustic foam on them and set them up in front of the kit and it helped alot with the high end harshness and reflections.

[Bryan Cook]

try putting drums in a corner "firing" out at an angle (not perpendicular). Also keep in mind that things that are near walls effectively "sound" like they have more low end and is compounded in corners and even more in a corner and near the floor (or ceiling) - 3 adjacent walls. (this goes for monitor speakers too)