Guitar thread

[Oz]

Rogue's are hit or miss...  Their mandolins are total shit, but the resonator I have is amazing, especially considering its price vs. a national, etc.  The acoustics though...no clue. 

[Nebu]

I think that the $200 price point is a good place to be.  Takemine, Washburn, Yamaha, Ibanez, and others will give you good bang for the buck.  If the person is a true beginner, then I'd say to buy the guitar that you really want to put your hands on.  If you aren't drawn to playing it, no guitar is worth the money.  I suggest $200 as this is a guitar sturdy enough to last until you build skill and of decent enough build to sound good as you begin to improve. 

If you live in an area with pawn shops, I'd consider that as well.  You can get a used acoustic for half price and get some great deals if you bring a friend that can play it and check for the straightness of the neck. 

[Raph]

We should have a whole forum, then we could make the "starter acoustic" topic sticky. :)

Seagull came up in the past too. Been years since I touched one.

[Nebu]

Nebu,

if you just need a head and are wanting it to do musical masturbation (you know...playing by yourself) or home recording, I highly recomend getting the Vox AC4TV head.  The attenuater sucks, but 4watts is suprisingly loud and sounds very good, especially through 1x12, let alone 2x12 (it shakes my windows at 75+% volume, plus you get nice Vox overdrive at 50% for single coil and 40% for humbuckers).  

Plus, it's only ~$200.  Order the head from musiciansfriend, play it, and if you don't like it send it back.  They have a suprisingly good "not 100% satisfied" return policy.

I went down to Memphis and looked at the Vox gear and was pleasantly surprised by the quality for the money.  I ended up buying a Vox AC4TV Tube amp.  Thanks for the suggestion!

[Fraeg]

How loud do you need it? My 22W (@8 Ohms) Fender Deluxe Reverb (1x12) is wicked loud, when I get it to the right level of overdrive on the tubes, it's almost shaking the room. I was looking at a VibroKing, but at 60W (3x10) I'm not sure I'd ever be able to use the amp's natural overdrive.

If you're thinking of heads, maybe something like these smaller watt heads, unless you were looking for something to gig, you might need a bit mroe:

http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Blackstar-HT5-Series-HT5H-5W-Tube-Guitar-Amp-Head?sku=483560
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Egnater-Tweaker-15W-Tube-Guitar-Amp-Head?sku=423553

This one also looks kind of interesting.

http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Bugera-V55HD-55W-Tube-Guitar-Amp-Head?sku=502585

But I'm not much help here, I haven't heard any of them. I like my little Fender, it's not perfect but it gets the job done and is loud enough for the small club I visit. I'm also self-conscious about my playing, especially since I know most of the guys that work at the local guitar shops and I feel dumb playing in front of them...and I'm pretty good. But those guys are scary good. After buying the amp and guitar there, though, I now feel better about playing...when I have no money for new toys, heh. Listen, if you're halfway decent they'll enjoy the break from the millionth kid hacking up Enter Sandman or Stairway or whatever the song is that EVERY newb is hacking in every guitar shops everywhere.

My next toy is already pretty well scoped. Of course, it will be many, many years before I'll be able to afford it: http://www.taylorguitar.com/Guitars/Acoustic-Electric/Nylon/NS72ce/

Thanks for the links, I have been pondering how to replace my usa made fender hot rod deluxe.  I picked up a peavey 6505+ 1x12" 60w  tube combo amp based on a recommendation but it really isn't what I am looking for.  It clearly says "metal and Metal only" when I play it, also the clean channel is piss poor.

Perhaps I am trying to have my cake and eat it to, but I want the crushing heavy tone of say Godflesh, Sleep, Boris, Sunn O))), Entombed, and the ability to play nice cleanish bluesy stuff, without:

a) taking out a loan to pay for it all
b) having to play at skull shattering volumes in order to achieve said tones.

I am thinking a small 10-20w head is the way to go, then get a cab that will still meet my needs.


anyone else with some recommendations? my budget: I would prefer to stay sub 1k hell sub 700 if possible, but for something truly once in a lifetime I could go higher.

gotta say, given your past, I am surprised to see you rocking to the Beatles so much Sky, variety is the spice of life.

oh as others have said I am far too self conscious to just bring my guitar to a store and try and bring an amp through its paces.  I have been playing quite some time, but I am an absolute hack. 

[Sky]

Hrm. Based on personal experience, I'd use the Fender for your cleaner/bluesy tones and then tack this on: http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Pro-Co-Whiteface-Rat-Distortion-Guitar-Effects-Pedal?sku=430631

That's what we used back in the day before we had full stacks to destroy ears. I'm "old school" though, there might be a better solution. But when we needed crunch, we were all about the Rat pedal.

And Beatles = drums, I can't play much of any of it on guitar or bass, other than a few singalongs on acoustic many years ago to bed hippy chicks. Even on the drums, it's more like James Brown than Ringo.

[Amarr HM]

I like my little Fender, it's not perfect but it gets the job done and is loud enough for the small club I visit. I'm also self-conscious about my playing, especially since I know most of the guys that work at the local guitar shops and I feel dumb playing in front of them...and I'm pretty good. But those guys are scary good.

oh as others have said I am far too self conscious to just bring my guitar to a store and try and bring an amp through its paces.  I have been playing quite some time, but I am an absolute hack.  

You shouldn't care it's your money, your music, your expression, there's always gonna be someone out there better than you no matter what. If that was everybodies attitude there would only be a handful of musicians in the world. Playing music is how good you are at expressing yourself, not necessarily how good you are. I've played gigs with friends & patrons in the crowd who are million times better (at least technically) than I am, but it doesn't stop me getting up there and doing my damnedest, I do admit it can get a bit nerve wracking as no-one wants to make a fool of themselves, but I always get positive feedback from somewhere which makes it worth it.

If it's really that hard, have a piece of music rehearsed before you go in, one that sounds interesting or you like playing and just chug away on that. I know when I try out an amp or guitar it usually dictates what I end up playing, if I try out a fender amp I usually end up with some delta blues or orange amps make me wanna bang out some Zeppelin riffs etc.

[Raph]

Rearranged my recording setup to swap main mics. Also found that i can get multiple simultaneous mics going to the Audigy card and then to separate tracks, which is great... I didn't know my card could do that!

Also just set up AC-7 Pro on my new iPad, now I have wireless remote control of my DAW, which kinda rocks.

http://www.saitarasoftware.com/Site/AC-7_Pro.html

[Sky]

 

[Fraeg]

Hrm. Based on personal experience, I'd use the Fender for your cleaner/bluesy tones and then tack this on: http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Pro-Co-Whiteface-Rat-Distortion-Guitar-Effects-Pedal?sku=430631

That's what we used back in the day before we had full stacks to destroy ears. I'm "old school" though, there might be a better solution. But when we needed crunch, we were all about the Rat pedal.

And Beatles = drums, I can't play much of any of it on guitar or bass, other than a few singalongs on acoustic many years ago to bed hippy chicks. Even on the drums, it's more like James Brown than Ringo.

I bought a 1986 japan made boss hm-2 which is the exact stombox entombed and dismember used for that early swedish DM sound.  been messing with it, it very very fickle.  Later Roland moved production to china and those peddles aren't worth owning. (for example ebay japan made peddle starts at 80 bucks, china made ones go for around 10 bucks.)

Yeah I am thinking of returning the peavey and just buying the same fender hotrod deluxe.

*edit* Raph out of curiosity, what DAW do you use? (Ableton user here)

[Raph]

I use Acid 7.0 Pro... a freebie version of version, uh, maybe 3? came with the first quality soundcard I owned, and I have just upgraded and stuck with it all these years. I loved how easy it was to use back then, and now of course, it's all grown up and complicated, but I know it so I don't mind.

I don't really do electronica or the like, mostly recording acoustic instruments and some electric, MIDI recording, orchestration, that sort of thing. So stuff like Reason, FruityLoops, etc, never really clicked with me.

[Sky]

I think I still have that acid disc that was bundled with a sound card, heh. I really need to get my shit together on the pc part of recording, ironically.

Though as I've mentioned, I'm mostly working on classical pieces, and recording precise pieces like that is a complete pain in the balls. Doesn't help that I don't bother 100%ing any one piece, I just flip through sight-reading as I go. Some of them get really   like Bach's Prelude in C Minor (which is transcribed in D minor in my book). I can physically play most of it pretty easily - a couple trick string skips and I hate this arpeggio: 4xx431 that comes at the tail end of a D minor descending and is a huge finger shift (I think the preceding arpeggio is x0x231). Listening to the piece, you'd think the right hand would be difficult, but it's really easy, the left hand is a stone cold bitch that doesn't stop changing.

Here's a vid of Segovia playing it, my recorded version is a wee bit faster. And he pauses over the same chord I hate at around :25  

So anyway. Yeah, the first hurdle is memorizing the piece, then nailing it. Then the really tough part is to record the entire thing without making any mistakes in fingering or timbre, because the mic picks up every damned nuance. Blerg.

edit: Forgot to mention I did a quick run of recording drums, I definitely need a few more mics and also need to record my bass to a click track :) Doesn't help that the song I was writing was something completely bizarre, kind of a Mars Volta vocal and bass with funk drums and southern slide guitar. Wish I had more time and patience to nail things down better, I'd have quite a few recordings by now!

[Fraeg]

psst Sky, you forgot to link the video.

[Sky]

Oops, got busy at work while posting that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJd5kzuBSlc

Some of the other pieces in rotation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb3fK-xuTCU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrQBNeY-y0A (love this one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jot7Q9n7L9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-JToCsJhmo (he adds in another piece, but I like his version of the core song, so there)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvgHlDNczL8 (one of my more favorite pieces in rotation right now, especially around 1:05, I've been working on an alternate version that recalls that minor arpeggiation section a couple more times in the piece)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XWCfpYrcLE (another Carulli rondo, I have 4 in rotation)

And some older stuff like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jovQE7gMhA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSAWZcRb_9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEmeero7LUA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-_8NI6wEo (trying to find this interpreted better on youtube = fail...thnik I need to upload a copy and get yelled at by purists :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFfH1eUKmLM

Ok, I'll stop now. You get the idear.

[Sky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-_8NI6wEo (trying to find this interpreted better on youtube = fail...thnik I need to upload a copy and get yelled at by purists :)

Camera won't connect to the computer, not that seeing me play it is anything special :P Luckily I recorded the video in my nascent basement studio and hit play on the recorder. For some reason, really quiet. Need to boost it in post, I guess. Blah. And really, I'd have rejected it outright for flaws, but I wanted to share /something/ I've been up to, it's been so long.

Se io m'accorgo be mio d'un altra amante

[Nebu]

Amp update: Traded in my Vox AC4TV Tube amp for a Vox VT30 Modelling amp.

DEMO Video

The versatility is fabulous for getting my guitar chops back and the amp was pretty reasonably priced.  While the AC4TV had better sound overall, I'm really enjoying the toys that this modelling amp gives without having to dig up all of my old pedals.  It's a great spacesaver.

[Sky]

I want to beat that demo guy, heh. Years ago when I just had my crappy practice bass amp as a guitar amp (my post-band, everything got stolen amp), I got a Boss GT6. That's basically the same kind of thing, it can do a million things that I never use. I try to keep things simple, the only sacrifice I make is the Fulltone FD2 because I can't play loud enough to keep my amp driven where I want it. Though now that I have my proto-studio set up in the basement, I have been using the straight amp drive more. Can't wait to get that room finished, still holding off to see if it stays dry from year 1 improvements to the house (a couple wet spots last year, nothing this year, so I'm very cautious).

Anyway, versatility is nice to have. I like to just sit sometimes and punch through all the factory presets and play to whatever effect comes up. I was the studio rat in the band, though, always spending time in front of the rack dialing in new sounds. Probably why I don't do as much of that now, I guess.

[Nebu]

I figure I'll buy a good tube head when I have the guitar skills to appreciate it.  Right now, I like having a lot of toys to color the fact that I'm a hack guitarist. 

[Miguel]

If anyone is interested in a dead-simple recording program (for free), check out:

Audacity

I designed and built a small 6W tube guitar amp modeled loosely on the old '59 Fender Champ, however I changed the tone stack to a Baxandall configuration.  With a 12AX7, it completely saturates and is loud enough to hurt.  With a 12AY7 it's mostly clean, and with a 12AT7 is completely clean (and very low volume even dimed).

If you like DIY'ing your own gear, you can build a AX84 P1.

[Sky]

I figure I'll buy a good tube head when I have the guitar skills to appreciate it.  Right now, I like having a lot of toys to color the fact that I'm a hack guitarist. 

That's exactly how I did it. Played my shitty guitar until I felt like I needed a better one. And I've gone from playing with 80s metal distortion with flange and verb to just overdrive (with the amp verb and vibe, though).

I also need to get off the pot with a DAW already. I've been holding out hope for way too long of getting a laptop to bring down to the "studio", it gets old unplugging everything and bringing it upstairs, downloading the raw tracks into the pc. I'm not sure my old pc is up to snuff for DAW duties. Might be better now that I'm not trying to record directly to the pc, though ultimately I would like to have an interface for exactly that. Also starting to feel limited by the MR8HD and would like to trade up to the MR16HD. Still 4 live inputs, but unless I'm doing way more than I am now, that's enough for say 4 drum mics, or I could maybe pick up another small mixer to make a drum sub-mix. With the magical cash I don't have :)

Would love to build an amp someday. A guitar, too. Ah, well. Some day.

[Fraeg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-_8NI6wEo (trying to find this interpreted better on youtube = fail...thnik I need to upload a copy and get yelled at by purists :)

Camera won't connect to the computer, not that seeing me play it is anything special :P Luckily I recorded the video in my nascent basement studio and hit play on the recorder. For some reason, really quiet. Need to boost it in post, I guess. Blah. And really, I'd have rejected it outright for flaws, but I wanted to share /something/ I've been up to, it's been so long.

Se io m'accorgo be mio d'un altra amante

nice.. very quiet, but nice man. I have to say it is a very interesting contrast to the initial impression I built of you music wise.  Earlier I had an image of (indulge me here) long thinning hair, ratty Jeans, and old 80's concert t-shirts (uhmmm not that there is anything wrong with that if that is indeed the way you roll).

As for a DAW, I have found it really useful in my *productivity*, I went with ableton live, which is probably not very well geared to what you are doing (Live is more DJ/looping stuff -> industrial type crap).  That said, lots of DAWs have promo cds, which is how i settled with Live, ask friends/shops if they have promo DAW cds and check some things out.

[Sky]

Har! My hair is anything but thinning, I've donated to Locks of Love two years running (min donation is 10"). Right now I've got more of a 30s gangster pomade thing going, though. And my long beard has been shorn, I'm clean shaven. Casual wear would probably be a sports jacket, some very not ratty jeans and a modern concert shirt (because I like to support artists I see and buying merch is a good way to do that). I got a laugh out of most of the musicians at the renfaire digging on my Derek & Susan shirt.

You're not the only one surprised by my classical stuff. I'm what you might call....boisterous...and given the fact that when I was a pro I was playing metal and most locals know me from sitting in on blues jams, classical might not seem like my thing. But my first formal training was on classical guitar in school and I've always loved it. Several of my band's songs were classical pieces I wrote re-arranged for the band, and the training in fingerpicking is why I became such a good bass player, which then reflected back onto my guitar playing with a lot more percussiveness (too much, purists might say).

My favorite renfaire band was only at half strength - the harpist is in Spain doing a pilgimage and the charangist is in TX with his Andean band. On the good side, the viola de gamba player was playing a great 8-double-course lute and covering a lot of the harp parts while also getting in his solo vdg parts. At one point he was doing a bass line, arpeggiated chords and a solo on top. 

[Raph]

Rescuing thread from page 2.

I have been neglecting playing lately. So much so that I started to lose my calluses. I figured it out when I wrote a new song for the first time in ages, and had trouble recording it because my fingers hurt too much!

So I have resorted to the Baby Taylor to play in the meantime. It has light gauge strings, unlike my main beast the Blueridge jumbo, which I string with mediums (.013s and up).

I decided to try out the iPad's built-in mic, so I practiced for an hour or two with the iPad running Multitrack DAW (iTunes link). Turned out to be pretty easy to blow out the mic, but the quality is surprisingly good for a tiny mic like that. Unsure what it is doing to my iPad's memory :) , but I have the 64gig wifi so I think I have room. Getting the songs off of there was a little counterintuitive, but the docs make it clear... just not used to looking at docs for an iPad app!

Oh, and the new song... you guys are probably the right audience for it.  Comments welcome.

Not recorded on the iPad, but does use the Baby Taylor. Was trying out a new mic I picked up at a Guitar Center sale for $50, a Digital Reference DRI100 instrumental mic. It turned out to have a sound I didn't love, but liked OK (my vocal mics are better) but does have great directionality and did a decent job of not picking up the vocal. The vocal mic however picked up everything on the guitar, oh well. :)

[Sky]

I just bought an el-cheapo no-name classical guitar to get my nylon fix. It was set up really well, I love the local shop's setup guy (who did my Baby and SG). I just went for strings and picked it up on a whim, the fiancee loved it and I was able to snag it for $80, so what the hell. Be a long damned time before I'll have $2400 for a Taylor. Sounds decent, biggest problem is the cheap fretboard, I'm all about vibrato and the wound strings scratch. It's really quite awful and I probably won't be able to record with it, but it's good for retraining my fingers on a proper-sized fretboard (vs the Baby I've been playing for the last couple years). Some songs I have to re-learn because the stretches are so much longer, and my blues-based thumb-over playing doesn't work on the wider and fatter neck.

[Nebu]

I just bought an el-cheapo no-name classical guitar to get my nylon fix.

Came across THIS.

Amazing what you can do with a classical guitar and some skill.

[Sky]

That guy bars right on the fret wire, odd. Great performance, of course. I don't know how those guys keep their nails like that. I follow the Tarrega school of fleshy picking, mostly because having long nails is not very compatible with manual labor.

[Sky]

You know what one of the most humbling devices in the world is? A metronome.

Ye gods. I think I have a piece down and find the fastest I can play it (all 16th notes) is 66 bpm without errors. And the piece is moderato, like 108-120 bpm, ffs.

That said, being able to go home and get about a half hour every day on guitar is awesome. Fiancee agrees, since most days she gets to listen.

According to this WICKED PAGE I just found, it's actually andante, which is a bit more humane (76-108bpm). Around 70 is where it starts really falling apart from a technique standpoint, my fingers aren't able to keep a steady pace and actually have a tough time even keeping up with the tempo...and it's an easy pattern. The sheer repetition and trying to play it so evenly is challenging.

If you scroll down to 25 pièces pour guitare : extraites de la Méthode / de D. Aguado, it's piece #18 in that book.

[Selby]

I don't know how those guys keep their nails like that.

Lots of TLC.  I clear mine and still work a semi-manual labor job without too much trouble (laying cement\construction\etc would probably be much harder).  My guitar instructor used to chastise me for not taking better care of mine.  I still do it out of habit after all this time and when I pick up the guitar I can tell whether I let them get too long or not ;-)

[Miguel]

Hi all, check this out and tell me what you think:

Enter Sandman - My Version

I found the drum part to Enter Sandman from Metallica online (ostensibly from the Rock Band tracks), and added my own bass and guitar parts.  I consider Metallica's 'Black' album the quintessential hard rock sound, and I've been trying to get a recording setup that gets me close to that raw sound.  So the only part that remains from the original is the drum track:  everything else I added.  The whole thing I was trying to accomplish here is to perfect my recording technique to get close to this kind of hard rock sound.

Please forgive the sloppy guitar playing ... bass is my main gig.  I never liked Jason's original track so I took it up a notch, played with more distortion and played through a wah pedal (much like I feel Cliff might have done).

Let me know how close I got, and if you have any suggestions on the sound quality.  I didn't spend a lot of time mixing this so it may be guitar heavy.  I also gave up in the middle so it drops off rather abruptly.

[Sky]

I hate that song so much.

edit: Sounds great, man. I still hate that song. I want to get a good wah, they're great for tone control on the fly even if you don't wakka wakka. Definitely guitar-heavy, most guitarists would say the mix is perfect :P I'd like to hear the bass a bit more, sounds like a nice tone on it. When recording a 'four piece', I like the bass and guitar to sit right at the same volume...of course, I used to do the mixing for our four piece, hah.

One thing on the palm-muting on guitar, a personal thing. I like to use a very heavy pick (like over a mm, I use a 1.5 iirc) and really push your palm into the strings hard and bash the shit out of them. When we were a five piece I was the 'feel' player, the other kid was much cleaner, I could've been called sloppy I guess, but the combination of the extremely clean articulation and my tone from bashing the shit out of the pms was just intense. Also, adding the lower fifth to a power chord when you're playing a doubled part adds a lot of sound to it.

[Nebu]

I like it. 

You're making me want to start recording again.  I'm just not sure I'm brave enough to post it.  I have a feeling that my original stuff would sound horribly dated... ah, the 80's.

[Miguel]

Danke for the feedback.

I used a 3mm pick.  My technique has lapsed considerably over the years as I don't play much anymore, and spend most of my time recording and mixing rather than playing.  Palm muting is so much about muting everything just right so that there is a clean distinction between the open notes and the muted notes, but not so much that the resonance is choked off.

But I've found the 4-piece heavy rock sound to be the most challenging one to 'get right'.  Heavy distorted guitars tend to wash away everything else, and getting a mix just right to where you can hear everything has been a real pain.  But I've learned a few good pointers:

1) However good the human ear is at frequency selection (especially in the midrange), the louder of two equal-frequency sounds will always win.  So if you have two distorted guitars mixed together along with a male singer, they are all competing in the 500Hz to 1.5kHz range.  But I've found the secret is to use compression to emphasize the attack of everything:  drums, guitars, bass, etc.  This means fast attack and release times to really let the initial 'thwack' through.

2) Bass can't compete with metal guitar sounds.  The hash send out by a heavily overdriven guitar is almost impossible to compete with.  I've found distortion and attack is the only way to do it and have it heard in the mix.  Also, guitars need severe low-end rolloff below 200Hz or so to let the bass fundamental come thorough.  But for guitar, more distortion is definitely not more.

3) The amount of reverb needed to glue a hard rock mix is staggering.  You should hear the drum part solo'd:  it has almost 2 seconds of reverb decay time, and the snare is the worst.

#2 was a real epiphany for mixing for me:  I always tried to get everything sounding good in isolation, then blend afterwards.  It just doesn't work.  The guitar have to sound mid-rangy and snarly with high end, bass needs lots of distortion to put content up in the frequency ranges sensitive to human hearing, and the entire mix needs saturation to glue together.  For example, the guitar tracks solo'd on the mix above sound *awful*: trebly, screechy, snarly, but you can hear them over everything else!

Also, all of the sounds were recorded direct:  the guitar tone was from Guitar Rig 3's JCM800 model, the bass was through my Sansamp RBI mixed with a DI track.  I will also try panning the guitars to create more space.

And Nebu, record and post away.  We're only judgmental assholes in the Politics forum, right?

[Sky]

Now that I have my drums set up, I really want to get something together. I do have one new track I wrote inspired by a track off suicide girls' guide to living, which has an great soundtrack.  The Temptress by The Flies was the inspiration track, I call mine Come Hither Stare. It showed me I need to record to a click track :P But I love that Flies track, try to spin in a little Mars Volta rhythm section and some slide guitars. I lost a couple of the verses in the time it took to get everything down, I write extremely fast and then the inspiration is gone. But at some point I need to go back and clean it up and get it in a recorded form.

I use no reverb. I hate it, I was taught in the 80s when people were drenching shit in reverb and it biased me against it. I guess I should note you should not at all ever listen to my thoughts on mixing, because most 'professionals' hated my mixes. Too loud, too hot, too much bass, drums are too dry, blah. I'm so fucking lofi, my ideal is the way my band sounded through our boom box. To achieve perfection is to have failed, for artistry is imperfection (says the perfectionist, hah).

Wait, I do use some reverb, but not as glue or to make a part sound better. I use it purely to achieve a sound, like on the slide track I mentioned above. Same as I might use a little delay as an accent. I used to be very into effects (but not verbglue!), part of why I got away from them. I don't have the patience (or weed) to sit in front of a rack for hours on end dicking around with sounds anymore.

[Nebu]

2) Bass can't compete with metal guitar sounds.  The hash send out by a heavily overdriven guitar is almost impossible to compete with.  I've found distortion and attack is the only way to do it and have it heard in the mix.  Also, guitars need severe low-end rolloff below 200Hz or so to let the bass fundamental come thorough.  But for guitar, more distortion is definitely not more.

Two things I learned "back in the day"

1) I could rise above the guitar more easily if I brightened up my tone.  Something with some solid low-end punch, but thick in the mid range helps a lot.  I used to pattern my sound after Geddy Lee and Chris Squire (sound, not playing).  The brightness really helped compliment the oversaturation of guitar.

2) With bass, a good amp head and cabinet are really a must.  I played through a lot of rigs, but never felt that my sound was where it needed to be until I got my Ampeg tube head.  I'm not suggesting that you spend crazy $$ on bass gear, but will say that it makes a big difference.

[Sky]

I played through a Kustom Kasino Koncert solid state head. It was originally bought for our singer before we had a PA, one of the toughest amps I've ever seen. And wicked loud, though I forget the amps on it. Had a wicked punchy tone, I also used to try and dial in Geddy's tone (I stole the settings from our first bass player while I was still playing guitar in the band, he played in a rush cover trio with our first drummer). Played it through a peavey 2x15 that I loaded with 2 EV full-range 15" 400W speakers. Used no effects except a rat pedal and wah for playing Cliff's bass solo (and of course my own at times). I bought the speakers new retail, but the cab and head I maybe paid $150 for both used in 1987 or 8.

Bass shouldn't compete with guitar, it should counterpoint and complement. Thickens up when playing similar lines, and good writing should provide enough places where the guitar is freed up to do more in the upper registers. I dunno, we never had a big issue with mixing - again, most engineers I knew when I was in school hated my hot lofi mixes, though. I lost the hdd that had my tape transfers from the lone rehearsal/writing tape I have left (out of hundreds  ). I did have a sample tune that we had just begun writing that had a good example of what I'm talking about...