Double or quad tracking for 8-string guitar?

tc7four

New Member
So, I’m recording my band’s songs for a future release. I’m using an 8-string guitar in standard tuning with the 7th in B and 8th in E. The music is not fast but rather groovy, Meshuggah style. Ive always double tracked my guitars like most will do but I want the sound to be big and cut through the mix. Looking at a Meshuggah multitrack, there were way too many takes. 4-5 amps with 4 guitar tracks each, plus DI and room mics recording the room’s sound. I realise that this is one way of doing it, an extreme one. I’m trying to figure out if I should stick to double tracking or go quad tracking, 2 tracks hard panned and the other two panned at 70-80%. When I tried quad tracking, the sound lost its clarity and became sort of blurry. I tracked as precise as I could. Also, although my 8th string is thicker than what it was (.78 instead of .74) to reduce the string from vibrating too much, I still get a chorusy effect as the tuning is not always on point. I’d like to hear how you go about tracking something like this and achieve a big sound but retain the clarity of it. Sorry for the long post but I’ve been struggling with this for weeks now.
 


This was double tracked I believe....might have even single tracked it TBH, I'll have to double check the project file next time I'm at the practice space. I remember using a pretty aggressive high-pass on the guitars, at least 120, but I think as high as 200hz. Definitely never quite got the low-end of the overall track right where I wanted it, but I think the mix works pretty well. Could probably stand to bring the guitars up a db or two, but for a demo type track recorded with a podHD and Superior Drummer I think it works pretty well.

I agree on turning the gain down a bit, but not too much. I've also seen people get good results by having one track with as much gain as you'd want to use and then lowering the second track pretty drastically so they blend together and you get the string clarity out of the low-gain track.
 
Thanks for your tips guys. I will experiment and record some tracks in the weekend and might post them here.
 
Double track, panned hard right and left. Use a different pickup and amp. Once you nail that, try adding a clean-ish track straight up the middle and lower in the mix to add some definition.
 
Double track, panned hard right and left. Use a different pickup and amp. Once you nail that, try adding a clean-ish track straight up the middle and lower in the mix to add some definition.
On point with this one buddy! A lot of folks don't realize that huge ass distorted guitars that are often described as "tight" is a result of mixing different tones left center and right, properly!
 
... Oh and in addition to that, that's the same reason when something sounds great on a track I'm sick of hearing "dude what pickups did u use" lol
 
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