Just finished reading the whole thread (boss is out for some business
), I am now on the same page as anybody else, or at least I hope so.
Very, VERY interesting contributions from Chris_P, and I find myself sharing the same philosophy: I record with what I have and, if I have the choice, what I am most comfortable with. I recently spent some time tampering with the knobs of my Pod XT, and I think I got some interesting guitar tones for heavy metal. I used the stock presets as a starting point and thought "Ok, now, what is that I don't like in this preset?". It all started from there and from a good amount of listening to my own tones, a/b'ing with commercial products, changing guitar but keeping the same tone settings etc. It was a lot of fun and very inspirational as well, it's been a while since I last played heavy stuff. I cut a couple tracks with quad-tracking with slightly different settings and found that the guitars kind of EQ themselves. Additional EQ (just a bit) is in any case needed to make them sit right in the mix.
Anyways, I now feel compelled to ask how did the guys record the drums for the FTA's songs: imho they're just awesome. That's precisely the sound I would like to achieve with samples, if possible. Having a hard time on sampled drums....