Guitar part sounds like Santana... not in a good way

If it’s too overdriven and too compressed, then reamping it might not help. Can’t really get a clean sound out of an overdriven sound very well IME. At the same time, if you run the reamp amp really clean and leave lots of headroom, it might just work. In my mind, the Santana sound is fairly thick in the mids, so I’d try something like a Top Boost Vox amp with extended highs and dial it to not have much midrange. You may also have to EQ out some mids, either before or after the reamp.

Maybe go full Marty Robbins - Don't Worry?



If you don't know this tune, DO NOT jump to the 1:26 part. Let that song roll nice and smooth for at least a bit. Then get ready for a tone WAY out of left field, and WAY out of context for that song, that genre, time period, solar system, etc...

In other words, maybe REALLY feature your out-of-place guitar tone. Let it stick way out like a sore thumb.  Put some crazy effects on there.   Have all sorts of crazy panning and volume swells, maybe backwards echo.  

Also - after I thought about it for a bit, any chance you can dice the solo up into pieces that could work better, maybe like a call-and-response with another guitar part that you'd copy/chop/edit in from another part in the song?  If THOSE parts are played better, maybe you can reamp those things into something that complements the Santana parts.   Even if its just a rhythm part, say, on the left side setting up a chopped Santana lick on the right side, like trading fours.   

Welp... I did another pass of the re-amp with a high end boost and a bit of a mid cut from the amp and that did help. Using my Ampeg Gemini at low volume so it's high headroom type deal the way I have it set up. It fattened it up a bit, but man...

The Marty Robbins suggestion is actually not a bad one, all kidding aside. It's kind of like what you do with an "eccentric" vocal. You gotta turn it up to make it seem like you did it on purpose.

I already messaged the guy who hired me (he's a friend) with a "hey, mind I get a little crazy with this guitar solo?" and he's down to try it. Guy is fairly conservative musically so likely we're gonna end up with something that sounds like a Santana solo in the middle of a Randy Travis song, but I'm gonna give it a shot and give him my best sales pitch!

I feel you. Had a similar thing on the table a month back. Promised someone to take a look at a mix which I didn't plan to mix, just to check out if it was something worth working on. And there it was, that smooth vanilla cheapo lead sound played with no sense of what the folk song called for. There is really nothing more to do than pick up the axe yourself and re-track it. I did that just to make a point how the song could sound with the right guitar sound and lines for the production.

You cannot really change what's there. run it thru a Leslie and try to make something completely different out of it that way might make it less bad. But usually trying to fix something that is all wrong just makes it even worse. In this case I would likely tell the client it is what it is. Shit in shit out. Live with it or redo it right.

I actually haven't worked on this at all since last post. Getting back to it tomorrow and I'm gonna spend a total of 90 minutes trying new ideas and then it's just going to be... "Sorry buddy but you know what they say. Santana in Santana out."

Can you get someone who sounds like Rob Thomas to sing backup vocals?