Dave Otero’s Allegaeon Lead Guitar Mix: Carving Space & Character

Mixing prog metal leads can be a tricky beast. You’ve got shredding solos and intricate melodies that need to soar, but they often battle for space with equally dense rhythm guitars. When lead tones are printed similar to the rhythms, as was the case when Dave Otero mixed Allegaeon for a Nail The Mix session, you can’t just re-amp your way to distinction. So, how do you make those leads pop and give them their own identity? Let’s dive into Dave Otero’s approach.

The Initial Hurdle: Making Printed Leads Stand Out

Right off the bat, Dave faced a common issue: the lead guitar tones were pretty close to the rhythm tones. Ideally, you’d grab the DIs and re-amp for a completely distinct lead sound. But when you’re working with printed tones, you need a different strategy.

Dave’s first move is often to bring the lead guitars in on their own track, separate from the main rhythm guitar bus. This gives him a clean slate before deciding if they should feed into the rhythm processing. Sometimes, routing leads through the rhythm bus and then adding a mid-boosting EQ can work, but starting fresh allows for more tailored control. He even copied over a bit of Soothe2 from the rhythm tracks to the leads, which offered a little initial help.

Crafting Lead Character: EQ and Ambience

Once the leads are isolated, it’s time to sculpt their unique voice. Even if they sound decent raw, the goal is to ensure they have their own space and sonic signature.

Lead EQ: Finding Its Voice

For the Allegaeon leads, Dave found they already sounded pretty good but needed that extra push to sit right. This often involves careful EQ adjustments to emphasize the frequencies that will help the lead melody cut through without clashing. It’s about enhancing what’s there and making sure it doesn’t get swallowed by the wall of sound from the other instruments.

The “Luscious Bed”: Dave’s Go-To Lead Delay

A key ingredient in Dave’s lead guitar sound is a specific type of delay. He gravitates towards a tape delay style, which he feels adds a beautiful ambience without cluttering the performance. Instead of distinct, rhythmic echoes, this creates what he calls a “luscious bed” under the lead – something akin to a reverb, filling out the sound beautifully.

His secret weapon here? An old-school plugin: Voxengo Analogflux Delay. He uses a preset called “Journeyman” and has relied on it for around 15 years for his lead guitar delays. It’s so vintage, he even has to use a 32-bit to 64-bit wrapper (JBridge) to get it running in Cubase! While he’s found modern replacements for other delay duties, this one remains a favorite for leads due to its unique character.

Creating Space: Balancing Leads with Rhythms

Making leads shine isn’t just about processing the leads themselves; it’s also about how they interact with the rhythm guitars.

Tweaking Rhythms for Clarity

To prevent the leads from being completely eaten by the rhythm section, Dave often goes back to the rhythm guitars. He might add some “spiciness” and brightness, or look for ways to give the rhythm guitar mids a wider stereo image. This helps create pockets in the mix where the leads can comfortably sit and be heard clearly.

Taming the Fizz: Smart High-End Control

One of the biggest challenges with distorted guitars, especially leads, is managing harshness in the upper midrange and high frequencies. It’s a delicate balancing act to remove the unpleasant “fizz” without neutering the tone’s aggression.

The Modern Toolkit: Soothe & Refinement

Dave points out that newer tools like Soothe2 and Refinement (often referring to tools like Accentize DeRoom or similar intelligent EQs/resonance suppressors) have made this task significantly easier. These plugins can intelligently identify and attenuate harsh resonances, saving a lot of manual EQ hunting.

The “Don’t Overcook It” Philosophy

Whether using modern tools or traditional EQ, the golden rule is not to overdo it. Dave emphasizes that spending too long (say, 30 minutes) solely focused on taming harshness can lead to ear fatigue, causing you to cut way too much and kill the guitar’s energy.

Instead, he advises using these tools efficiently – often, the bulk of the work can be done in just a minute or two. You can always revisit and tweak later. The key is to work relatively quickly, constantly A/B, and bring in reference tracks to ensure you’re not straying too far. Remember, you can easily make guitars sound dull and lifeless if you’re too heavy-handed with cuts. As Dave puts it, it’s a balancing act, but the tools available now definitely streamline the process. This kind of nuanced understanding is something that develops with experience and focused learning, helping you to Unlock Your Sound: Mixing Modern Metal Beyond Presets.

Bringing It All Together (And How You Can Too!)

Dave Otero’s approach to mixing Allegaeon’s prog metal leads shows that even with printed tones, you can achieve fantastic separation and character. It’s about:

• Strategic initial routing to give leads their own space.
• Targeted EQ to define the lead’s voice.
• Characterful effects like tape-style delay (hello, Voxengo Analogflux!) for ambience.
• Adjusting rhythm guitars to complement the leads.
• Smartly taming harshness with tools like Soothe2 and a “less is more” mindset, especially regarding time spent on the task.

These are powerful techniques you can apply to your own mixes. But imagine seeing Dave Otero actually implement these strategies, explaining every click and decision, on the real multitracks from Allegaeon’s session.

That’s exactly what Nail The Mix offers. Every month, you get to watch world-class producers like Dave mix incredible songs from scratch, using the actual session files you also receive. You’ll see how they tackle challenges, choose plugins, and make those critical decisions that elevate a mix from good to great. If you’re serious about leveling up your metal mixing skills, seeing it done in real-time, on real sessions like Allegaeon’s with Dave Otero, is an absolute game-changer.