ilovefuzz.com

thanks man, im glad u are checking up on the thread.

i dont even play with eq...for now i am looking at the eq graph, and just running all guitars to an emi es124 plugin and it sounds GREAT man.
i love that little plugin.

my preamp is solid state, no need to push the gain, but i can totally get what you mean with that

in the end i will likely be using an interesting newer plugin named Nebula
http://www.acustica-audio.com/index.php ... Itemid=229

it is essentially a gear modeler, from what i have seen so far.
old compressors, preamps, mixers, shit like that.

it is going to be funny when my digital (and therefore less worthy to many) guitar tracks are going to end up sounding better than the guy i know who just recorded with steve alibini

Dont be afraid to high pass those guitars at like 80-125 if need be....

Decibill wrote:Dont be afraid to high pass those guitars at like 80-125 if need be....

Thanks...

I find a tiny upper mid scoop makes a huge huge difference on guitars
if youre into that sort of thing

If your recording digitally, it shouldn't make a huge difference what level you're recording at, as long as you're not clipping. That said, the hotter you record, the more likely you are to be overdriving some of your input hardware, which can be good or bad. I wouldn't worry about recording levels too much, just stay out of the red for digital recording.

You also want some room to breath; it's easy to lop off dynamics later on, but impossible to get them back. I try not to low pass or high pass, unless I hear something I don't like. I've made more mixes sound weird with the high-pass than I've actually improved. I only use it if there are weird grunting textures or if I specifically need to make room for the bass. For dropped guitar tunings, sometimes you have to get rid of some of that crap, though.

Ultimately, there's very little disadvantage to recording digital at lower levels; you'd just have to turn it down in the mix anyway if you want to have proper gain staging. Get your stuff sounding good, but I'll reiterate what everyone else is saying; don't master in the mixing stage, especially if you don't have a ton of experience. I hear a lot of mixes that are squashed to within an inch of their lives. Leave some dynamics because you can squash them later but you can't get them back.