".One or two folks have posted along the lines of, well, once you get in a band mix, that doesn't matter as much. My experience says that's backwards. When I actually start dialing in a live sound in the room with my bands, there is a ton of fine tuning to get everything sitting right. Sometimes it's the twist of a knob. Sometimes one guitar really does sound better than another in a certain situation. And sometimes it comes down to pickups. musician. Ok. But just pretending this is what metal guitar is, or that minor differences don't matter, and rushing past it all to share the secret truth that the koolaid drinkers don't want to admit? No.
This is a crucial point that has deserved many threads of their own. In alive environments, the first thing an engineer does is EQ out most of a guitars lows so the guitar doesn't fight the bass or the low keyboards.
And in some venues with some bands, they'll actually knock off some highs to keep the guitar from fighting symbols, vocal overtones etc.
Compression isn't unusual, it depends on all the variables.
The exact same thing happens in the studio. We notch instruments into the mix so they don't fight each other. The next time you're in a good studio or a professional live environment, ask the engineer if he can solo guitar for you, that has been notched into the mix.
If so, you will be amazed because the guitar will not be the big honking thick thing that we think of, it's a little bit of a thin jangly thing in the mix.
Back to the OP, this is another reason that the original vid is garbage. Good guitarists spend years trying to dial in their particular tone, And yes a lot of it is fingers, but a lot of it is all of the other variables. They end up finding something that works really well for them And then the recording or front of house engineers take that tone and manipulate it to get the best overall tone.
Anyone who ignores scale length, pickups wood, etc will find that the engineer can't save a horrible tone.
