Tips and Tricks for Recording Massive Metal Guitar.

What’s new at Zystrix? Read on… March 2, 2026 Tips and Tricks for Recording Massive Metal Guitar (part two of two) In the last episode we went over part one of Tips and Tricks for Recording Massive Metal Guitar (click here for a refresher). This time we’re going to go over the final part -- the part two of Tips and Tricks for Recording Massive Metal Guitar. We’re working on a bigger guitar sound. And the solo piano tune called Vanishing Dream by Dangerous Neighbors is also available for a listen. So sit back and relax. Welcome to Zystrix, the heartbeat of the universe. Where creativity and free-thinking have more value than conformity. Background Artwork The colorful artwork that surrounds the edges of this website is invisible to many cell phone users. It’s included here (with others) for your enjoyment. Multiple copies are tiled together for a cohesive and seamless background seen all around this page. Enjoy. Introduction Tips and Tricks For Recording Massive Metal Guitar (part two of two) Once again, just like the last issue I am going at this assuming you already have a basic understanding of recording, and also a basic understanding of setting up a guitar. The higher the computer CPU power you have the better off you are going to be for recording. Please see part one for basic introductory info. If you do not understand all of this simply follow along for future reference. The Learning Curve Just Got More Steep First things first. Massive metal guitar sounds do better with a backing track or two to support them. A click track and a groove makes for great inspiration. Hence… Drum Stuff for Massive Guitars Before going into more guitar sounds let’s start with the backbone and accents of your sound – the drums. Use a drum sound that works with your songs. Purchase or download a free drum plugin that fits in your budget and offers the sampled sounds you prefer. In the DAW, Reaper, it’s possible to build your own drum kit from your favorite samples and the free Reaper plugin called ReaSamplMatic 5000. There are many free drum samples to download online including these free drum sounds. Make and use a template of your favorite drum sounds so the MIDI drum kit sounds consistent. Download and use free grooves for the drums, or invent your own using simple snare and bass drum. Record your guitar tracks using drums and a click. The click gives the tempo and the drums give the groove or feel. A great way to build a free drum groove library is to use a program called Tux Guitar. Tux Guitar is a free open source program from opensource dot net and it runs on Windows, Apple, and Linux based computers. It can open GP5, GPX, PowerTab, Tabledit, and of course it’s own file types. To get bass guitar and drum MIDI files for later editing or for creating your own tracks simply lookup your favorite band (we’ll choose Iron Maiden) in GP5 file types and download any tune of theirs you choose. G ProTab dot net is great place to start searching for metal files, so just pick Iron Maiden, or one of their songs by name, or even a music genre not even related. In Tux Guitar open the downloaded Iron Maiden data and save it as a MIDI file, open the file in your DAW, and give each instrument it’s own track. Then erase the tracks you don’t need. Voila! You now have drum grooves in a MIDI format to edit as you feel or see fit. Save the drum files into folders labeled by feel, or song name, grooves, or however you like. Excellent. Beginning Guitar Sound Make sure your guitar sound is good before adding any compression, EQ, effects, and so on. Don’t try to fix it in the mix or worse yet, bury it in the mix. For instance, sometimes a guitar signal with accidental digital distortion can be repaired by running it through a distortion or amp emulator pedal. I’ve had pretty good luck using an original SansAmp pedal. But don’t count on it. The guitar sound should be good enough so it nearly mixes itself before adding any effects, EQ, and so on. Templates What’s a template? It’s a way of saving a small mix that can be used the same way over and over. Think of it as a personal bus or a tiny mix designed just for your guitar (or drums, or bass, and so on). Use a recording template in your DAW for guitars, bass, drums for consistency. Once you have the basics for these instruments you will save yourself a lot of time in the next song or the next project using the same procedure you used before. If you like double tracking then make and save a template for that. The same goes for quad tracking if you prefer that. Make the template for 2 or 4 guitars and save it. Your template could include amp emulations, stereo placement, master EQ and compression, and any special effects. Tweak your template until it works in a mix, and then save it. Make sure you tweak your template in a band or mix context for the greatest overall tone. There’s also more on quad tracking below at 2+4. I Forgot How it Went Get your ideas recorded quickly to capture the feel. I use a portable recorder along with a metronome to record and later catalog ideas, and I also explain to myself the fingering so I know how I did it in case I need it in the future. Sometimes I count off the tempo while playing the part so I can later figure out where one is. Some ideas I liked at the time are not that good after listening to them later, so I just throw them back in the refused pile to be improved later. Or a video helps a lot too because the fingering is obvious. Unfortunately video files tend to get large. I then store these guitar idea files in folders organized by feel. Does this really have anything to do with getting a massive guitar sound? No. Just feel. Blend Single Guitars by Ear Using different microphones or IR cabs is another excellent way to add width and heaviness to your guitars while retaining clarity. Blend a bright IR sound with a heavy sound and blend them to mono by ear. Do this again for the next guitar but use a different combination of cabs and blend them by ear. Mixing a mono guitar is always phase correct. However, don’t forget to check for possible phasing issues when mixing two or more guitars across a stereo field. Double and Quad Tracking Guitars Quad tracking is just like it sounds: 4 mono guitars across a stereo field. For double tracking usually the first two guitars are panned hard left and right. For quad tracking there are two more guitars added and one is panned roughly 75 degrees left and one is panned about the same amount on the other side. Use your ear to figure out where the panning should be for maximum girth. This is where your template comes in handy to arrange the guitars in a hurry. Don’t forget to check the panned guitars for phasing problems. In your template use an overall EQ, if desired a tube or tape style overdrive sound (I prefer tape) for better blending, and a compressor to reign everything in. Be careful not to over do it with the overdrive to retain the clarity of the guitars. Double Tracking Guitar the Easy Way I know there’s a lot of engineers who say cut-and-paste is the WRONG way to double up guitar parts. And I agree with that in most cases. But if the guitarist is clever at getting parts done correctly on the DAW time grid then this method of cut-and-paste is a hands down winner. And it saves time. In the interest of saving space here there’s a complete run-down on how to do it in the August 4, 2025 issue called How to Double Track a Guitar the Easy Way. The Sound That Teaches Remember to compare your mix to reference tracks, or tracks produced by professionals. Often a reference track is a tune by one of your favorite bands. Maybe it’s the Strawberry Nosebleeds. Compare your mix to theirs listening from theirs to yours to judge your mixing progress. There are programs available that compare mixes, but training your ear isn’t such a bad choice either. This can help you gauge the balance of your mix and ensure it meets the industry standards of the band sound you are chasing. If it’s not up to snuff and doesn’t compete with their mix just keep trying. If your mix is better than theirs then you are a pro and you can stop reading here. Nice job. Amp Simulator Plugins There are many paid amp emulator plugins that sound great (Amplitube, Guitar Rig, Positive Grid) and they can be a real time-saver for getting a great guitar sound. However, I tend to go with stuff that’s free or built into my pedals. The best free plugins to my ear are the NAM modeler, the LePou Amps, Nick Crow Lab 8505, and the Ignite Amps Emissary. These plugins (especially the NAM modeler) beat the paid versions for sound to my ear, and the NAM modeling software plugins can now be used on stage with the NUX Amp Academy Stomp pedal, and after some conversion the Valeton GP-5 and the GP-50. And IR cab emulators make a great amp sound even better, but sometimes it requires listening to many of them to find the ones you like. However, there are many free IR cabs available that sound as good as the paid versions. Advanced Techniques for a Single Massive Guitar Many of these methods will also work on multiple guitar mixes and not just for a power trio guitarist, so try them on one or two or four guitars, or arrange them for something new. Multi-tap delay This is great for solos or increasing the perceived size of the guitar mix. Use a relatively tight multi-tap delay with a random echo tap. Gently blend this echo sound with the guitar mix to give it a curious subtle but big effect. The guitar becomes interestingly huge. There are many paid versions of a multi-tap delay, but one that’s excellent and free is the Chow Matrix. The Chow Matix is a complex and infinitely unpredictable multi-tap delay that goes from tempo sync (or not), to curious delays, to outer space adventures, to bizarre psychedelic dreams. The included presets are great starting points. This plugin is only for the adventurous at heart. MIDI Use a guitar track to produce MIDI data. In the DAW Reaper the chromatic tuner plugin (ReaTune) can produce MIDI output. If your guitar to MIDI glitches a lot simply slow down the recording while retaining the pitch and record the MIDI data. You may have to repair the data to match the guitar in time depending on the use, but there are free websites to convert sound to MIDI that are very time/pitch accurate. Now use this MIDI data to control a synth patch (brass tones are nice) and run this synth sound through an amp and speaker emulation. Mix this with your guitar sound to produce a massive composite. Where Are We? Another cool idea is to take the above MIDI data and use a synth patch that’s more of an atmosphere or a slow pad and use this as a background wash to add an interesting or eerie depth to the overall band mix. Mimiq pedal Set the pedal to a double output in stereo and run the original clean guitar through this and record it. Run the original clean guitar signal into an amp simulator and position it somewhere in the front mixed with the band. Now take the recorded stereo signal and run it through a pair of amps and cabinets set to different sounds and pan this so it sounds like an amp stack somewhere behind the guitarist. Bleed in a hall type reverb for stage realism. Or here’s another one… Do what you did above but mix the background stacks very hard left and right and run the reverb so it covers the cabs. Try a stadium reverb type. Now run the wide stereo for a background encompassing sound -- think a modern version of Van Halen’s Beautiful Girls. Poultec EQ There are many variations from different companies on this EQ but my favorite is the Ignite Amps PTEq-X. And surprisingly it’s a free download. This EQ adds a nice thickness and presence to guitars that’s hard to explain, but if it’s turned off you need it back on again. There are many videos on how to run this effect on heavy guitars. For best settings simply remember 666. Fairchild 1176 Compressor There are a lot of compressors out there, but the Fairchild has just the right amount of retro tone and oomph to make guitars seem fatter. Waves makes a good one, the PuigChild 660 and 670, as does T Racks, the Vintage Compressor. For wide stereo guitars you’ll need a stereo version. However, if you are looking for bang-for-the-buck check out the free VariMoon 660 compressor by Analog Obsession. It doesn’t do stereo, but it’s a great compressor. Another one that’s pretty good is the Fairly Childish Compressor that comes with the DAW Reaper. The following compressors aren’t exactly a Fairchild tone but they are excellent none-the- less and offer a highly musical fat tone. Try the TDR Vladg Molot. It takes a while to learn it, but it’s worth it. Another one that’s extremely good is the TDR Molotok, and it goes with anything army green. Or if you need great compression and even mid/side control, check out the Variety of Sound Density Mkii or Mkiii. And for something really special check out the Limiter No.6 by Vladislav Goncharov. If you are looking for some serious clean muscle for mastering your DAW project, or strapping to your guitar bus this is excellent. It’s got a compressor, high frequency limiter, multi-band mode including M/S, brick-wall limiter, maximizer, clipper, and has a changeable GUI. It’s a work of art with more moxy than most paid plugins of it’s ilk – a phenomenal free download that seriously kicks ass. Killer. Pre-Amps and Parallel Distortion If you are looking for a strictly tube or tape sound there are some great free choices. Check out the free Klanghelm IVGI2 -- think 1960s home console stereo. Wow. The Sampleson Overheat is another excellent tube pre-amp emulation. Chow Tape by Chowdhury DSP is an emulation that’s based on a top-of-the-line 1967 consumer audio analog tape machine -- the Sony TC-260. This current version can be used to emulate a wide variety of reel-to- reel tape machines, and it has an excellent wow and flutter section. Serious. This tape emulation plugin is better than any paid version I’ve ever heard -- it competes with the Waves J37 -- and Chow is a free download. To run any of these in a parallel mix simply run the guitars that are a little weak sounding through one of these pre-amps and commit that stereo sound to two tracks to carefully fold back into the overall guitar mix. Instant thrust. EQ and Channel Strips Try a Schep style preamp for the guitar mids -- Waves makes a good one. Schep has an excellent midrange sound for guitars to stand out in a mix, and the preamp section adds a nice round fatness. Add a stereo compressor, if needed, after the strip. Or try the free download Analog Obsession Merica for some excellent EQ. The Analog Obsession Frank CS is another excellent free plugin that makes easy work of taming guitars in a stereo bus with retro studio quality EQ and compression. And if you can, go to the Analog Obsession Patreon page and make a donation. Conclusion Tips and Tricks For Recording Massive Metal Guitar (part two of two) Ooops, there are many more options to be added here like side chain compression techniques, EQ notching and inversion, and others, but we’ve run out of space. In the last issue we covered the basics of getting a massive metal guitar sound, and without using the basics this second part of the guitar mix doesn’t matter. This second section gave a quick glance of the advanced ways of making metal guitars sound even bigger and better. I hope this final section has given you food for thought and consideration, helped you discover a new plugin for experimentation and better mixes, and maybe it has given you a new approach in your continued adventures of mixing massive metal guitars. Vanishing Dream -- solo piano by Dangerous Neighbors Sometimes a dream escapes just as a person is waking. Other times it’s the end of life and a person realizes the dream they had for decades is now impossible. Click here for the MP3 of Vanishing Dream. Click here for the video version. Enjoy. Don’t touch that dial… Stay tuned next time… In the next metal guitar adventure we’re going to do something that’s not covered very often: right hand techniques for guitar. So prepare to throw away your flatpick. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll see you then. They say opposites attract, but try telling that to my short ugly girlfriend.

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