There are many techniques employed in recording guitars. To get a wall of sound, a small 10" combo amp could produce great guitar sound on a record with proper setup. Even a single guitarist can perform a session as if two or three back-up guitarists playing behind him to get a sense of pseudo stereo sound.

On an home/apartment or poor-soundproofed studio adjacent to neighborhood, you don't have to seduce people around to kill you because their ears are not appreciate that much with the distortion sound, arrested by police or even waking up the dead by cranking the tube amp up with full blown double 4x12" stack at midnight to get the sound you desired.

Recording session differs with live environment, so does the guitar setup. By knowing appropriate guitar recording techniques, you can save time and money for studio session fees and equipment invested, yet creating bold and heavy defined guitar sound on records. Rest assured BugJet has compiled guitar recording techniques for low budget musicians. This article doesn't cover acoustic guitar recording. All are about beasts from hell of metal distortion.

1. PREPARATION

-First thing first, prepare your guitar. Use new strings and tune in properly. The sound differences between old and new strings are noticeable at least for the normal ears, not a deaf one. Chromatic tuner is excellent tool to keep your axe in tune as precisely as razorblade. If you don't have it, Korg has made cheap chromatic tuner under $20.

-Cable, cable, cable. How often the cable is most underrated and ignored stuff? Don’t you know that the hum, noise, hell of disturbing sound picked up by guitar cable? Invest a good one. Luckily, a good (or even best) instrument cable doesn't cost as much as home audio cable worshipped by audiophile enthusiasts.

Example, an analysis plus cable, top brand premium quality instrument cable used by Eet Syahranie from the band EdanE, costs less than US$500. so as the Planet Waves, brand by D'addario used by Mark Tremonti and Santana Guitar Techs, is a bit less. A cheap yet good-Ernie Ball UltraFlex costs only US$15. several ProCo cables with oxygen-free copper costs only US$10. Lastly, Whirlwind guitar cable offers $9.95 for 20 ft long.

-Position. Whether you record in studio monitor room, rehearsal room or your lousy bedroom, stay as far as you can from: TV, Computer, CRT Monitor, Lamp Dimmer, Power Supply, UPS, any devices contain transformer connected to AC power. They can interference your pick-up and cable (i.e. unbalanced one) to produce unwanted hum.