Trying to achieve modern rock sound but gtrs end up sounding to hissy and thin

[stormtrooperpez]

I'm not a mixer by profession - I'm a sound designer - but I'd point at your mix too. The Linkin Park stuff is tightly mixed, the guitar and bass are pretty indistinguishable to the point where you don't notice the bass as it's own instrument, it just sounds like a heavier guitar. Also your high hats are too up front and harsh in the mix - LP's are more in the back.

I think you're guitar tone is pretty good - you could probably pull back some of the highs and boost the low mids a bit, but I would focus on your mix. What you're attributing to a great guitar tone from LP may in fact be a great guitar/bass/drums mix with a focus on the guitar (it's hard rock after all).

AB

[O.G. Killa]

I just wanted to throw another concept at you that helps me when I record guitars. Try it, see if it makes sense to you, and if it does add it to your bag of tricks.

When listening to guitar, especially a 4x12 cabinet, you aren't just hearing one of the speakers, you are hearing all 4 together. Have you ever tried to disconnect 3 of the 4 speakers and listen to what it sounds like? It sounds pretty lame. In a way, that's what your doing with your current setup. You are only close micing one speaker on each cabinet. To get that really great sound you hear when you walk into the room, you need to put up multiple mics to capute it.

I noticed you were talking about phasing problems. Phasing when recording guitars can be a good thing if you can use it to your advantage. After all, the sound of a guitar stack is in essence due to phasing. All four speakers are outputting the exact same signal, but each speaker sounds (and moves) slightly different from the others. This creates differences in phase (at different frequencies) from one speaker to the next. The combination of these differences (among other things) results in the guitar tone you hear in the room.

One thing that stood out to me is that you were close micing one speaker of each of your two cabinets with a SM57. I noticed you also had a 421, how come you didn't use it? Micing two of the speakers of each 4x12 will result in a completely different sound than either one mic on it's own. The phase cancellation between the two will most likely take care of the problems you are describing.

The other thing that struck me was that you were recording the amps in stereo pairs. I guess I could see how that would work but I am guessing that it may be contributing to your problem. Here's what I do, try it and see if it works for you...

All guitar mics come in on mono channels. The output of all mics for each amp are bussed to a mono bus and then routed to a mono aux channel. I then pan the Aux to where I want it. this way you are combining the sound of the different mics on each guitar amp into one single mono track. If I were recording two amps at the same time I would do the same for each amp.

My usual setup for heavy metal guitars is 3 to 4 mics on the 4x12. Record all mics to separate tracks and bus them to mono Auxes for each amp/Take. I usually end up doing 3 rhythm guitar tracks...one panned center, one panned left and one panned right. When you think about it, that's 12 channels of audio for the guitar (4 mics going to Right, 4 to Center, and 4 to left). Then I adjust the EQ to make room for other instruments if needed. one other thing I do is listen to the 4 mics on each amp when mixing. Try different levels between the four and try turning some off and on to see how it changes the sound. On some tracks I may only use two of the four...on others I may use all four. It's better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it. I also do the same with the 3 rhythm tracks, sometimes you need all three, sometimes you may only need one.

Well...that's all I have to say about that. hope it helps. Here's another "food for thought". As an experiment once, a friend of mine recorded a guitar part (two mics on a some little fender amp (1x12) ten times. Each of the ten sounded so-so by themselves and when all ten were mixed together it just sounded like mush. He then opened up a ten-band EQ plugin on each track and pulled all the bands down except for the first one (on the low end). The second track he pulled all the bands down except for the second band, and so on through the ten tracks. After that he then somewhat randomly panned each track to a unique position so that no two tracks were in the exact same position in the stereo field. Now listening to his idea I thought to myself that it would sound like crap. But I had to see what it sounded like anyway. When I went over there I was amazed, it was a pretty big, fat, chunky guitar tone! It was like the guitar surrounded you.

Experiment...try things. You'll eventually find what works for you.