How to get distorted guitars stand out in front?

Cmc29

It's easy to push any instrument back into the mix using reverb but how do you get an instrument, specifically distorted guitar, to stand out in front? My instruments are drums, bass and 2 guitars double tracked and panned. I am kind of going for a stonery sound so the guitar is pretty heavily distorted and i often use a fuzz box. I also tend to use a lot of power chords so it's a full on wall of distortion or fuzz. What i want is the guitar tracks to stand out in front with loads of punch. With regards to EQ, compression and any time based effects, what things can i play around with the try to get the effect i'm looking for? Any tips at all would be great. Cheers

By the way, just a few bands for reference on the type of sound i am looking for - Kyuss, Fu Manchu, The Melvins, Down, etc.

Seziertisch

Generally use less distortion, a good crunch can sound a lot heavier on record than a more distorted sound which might be more satisfying to play through.

Fuzz in general can be tricky to get right on record, particularly is you are looking for a more defined sound. Try cutting the bass on your amp and boosting treble to get it to cut through more.

It could also be the case that your guitar/amp aren't capable of delivering the sound you are after, I know Josh Homme and guys from Down have pretty tweaked guitar rig set-ups, a Mexican Strat into a Marshall Valvestate isn't going to be able to give you that sound.

Otherwise, those bands you listed have very coloured sounds, lots of transformer saturation, recorded to tape etc. Though there are plug-ins that do saturation and stuff, they can only help you along the way and won't work as a 100% substitute for using similar gear as was used on the recordings you are aspiring to.

Otherwise, give parallel compression a try.

eoin5

Apart from what Seziertisch said what I found to help the guitar is to eq the bass to give the guitars more room. If you're using a plec try boosting the bass at 1k a bit (if you're using fingers maybe 400Hz or so) and see if it still does the job at a lower volume level.

Paolo_M

Cmc29 wrote: »

It's easy to push any instrument back into the mix using reverb but how do you get an instrument, specifically distorted guitar, to stand out in front? My instruments are drums, bass and 2 guitars double tracked and panned. I am kind of going for a stonery sound so the guitar is pretty heavily distorted and i often use a fuzz box. I also tend to use a lot of power chords so it's a full on wall of distortion or fuzz. What i want is the guitar tracks to stand out in front with loads of punch. With regards to EQ, compression and any time based effects, what things can i play around with the try to get the effect i'm looking for? Any tips at all would be great. Cheers

By the way, just a few bands for reference on the type of sound i am looking for - Kyuss, Fu Manchu, The Melvins, Down, etc.

To help the geetars stand out I'd try compressing the lows from 300 Hz downwards, maybe high pass around 80-100 Hz.
Then boost somewhere around the 3 - 3.5 kHz range, it's usually where the bite is.
With lots of fuzz it can help to low pass/shelf above 8kHz ish.

It's all entirely dependant on the source audio though, there's no one good solution.
It's almost like asking "how much I need to turn my tuning peg to get in tune".
The answer is that it depends on what pitch you're currently at and what pitch you wanna be at.
We've a rough idea of the sound you want from the bands you mentioned, have you got any clips of what you've recorded so far?

BTW: I'm just a home hobbyist, but geetars is my thang.