Guitars: The starting point

Now that the editing of the drums has been done, it is time to focus on the guitars. Some people might continue with bass or some other instruments, but for me, guitars are the obvious next step. In my playing style, the rhythm guitars are the most static (or to say the least improvised) part in the recording, so it is easiest to nail them down now.

As I said earlier, I chose to use two guitar tracks on the album instead of one. This makes me play everything two times (sigh), but allows also some harmonies and rhythmical variations to be played without additional instruments.

I have been using SansAmp Classic and some effect pedals for guitar recording in the past couple of years. Yes, it is a compromise between easier recording and mixing process and ultimate sound. During past years, I have found out that nailing a very good sound that is easy to mix with a regular amp and cabinet might be very tricky. You have to play really loud to get that power amp distortion, which means you have to play in a rehearsal room during night time, and usually you need to EQ the result heavily as the mic placement that you think was very good ends up being bad after all.

This time I thought I would use Catalinbread Sabbra Cadabra pedal in front of the SansAmp, while SansAmp would be set to provide an almost clean sound. Sabbra Cadabra is an analog emulation of the classic treble booster + Laney amp setup Iommi was using during the 70's. However, the pedal is capable of providing settings way over the ones Sabbath used, going far into compressed ultra high fuzz territory used in the modern stoner and doom albums.  I tried different sound settings, and ended up having a sound that is a bit fuzzy, but not too much so that I can still play the palm muted riffs. I put here a clip of the status so far.

I have three guitars I intend to use on the album:

- A black Warmoth "Les Paul". Actually it has a bolt-on neck and a fender scale so it is not very close to Les Paul in any way. It resonates very well, it is easy to play and it has high gain output because of the EMG:s.

- An amber Les Paul built by my friend. This guitar is very bright sounding and it has P90:s, so it is not a jack-of-all-trades kind of a thing. But it sings beautifully and I think I will record the clean parts with this one. 

- A black Edwards 335 copy. Compared to the Les Pauls, it has more mid range and mellower tone.

I tried recording all the guitars in a context of a same song. They naturally sounded different, but not so much that I couldn't mix the song with any of the instruments. So I think that I will end up using different guitars in different songs.

One thing I have been also thinking is whether to use other effects such as delay while recording the guitars or not. With effects, you get a better playing feel and touch, but you might end up in trouble while mixing. I thought that this time I do the main rhythm tracks dry, but use the effects for the other guitar parts and solos.