Help recording lead guitar parts

[Soloist]

I have been using a POD 2.0 for all my rhythm parts with generally satisfying results and I have always loved the lead guitar tones when using the POD as a preamp, however, in the mix, when I record my lead guitar tones into my HD recorder or keyboard, the tone seems to lack a near ineffable professional quality. More specifically, the guitar always sounds so UP FRONT and no amount of reverb/delay seems to remedy this problem. The only thing that comes close to fixing the problem is using a center cancelling effect on my Roland recorder, additionally, I feel like those really high overtones, in the 8-15khz range, like what you hear in Satriani's "Flying in a Blue Dream" are just nowhere to be found and whenever I try raising the presence either on the POD or the recorder it just saturates the sound with white noise type distortion. Is this just one of the downsides of using a POD or is there something I can do (perhaps within the POD) to fix this? I would love to use my ADA MP-1 or even another one of my amps but recording amps in my apartment complex is near impossible, between the random noise and occasionally blaring subwoofers from my next door neighboors. I have heard good things about Palmer speaker simulators, may that be a better option than using the POD?

This is so frustrating, with the sound I am getting Joe Satriani himself could not make a good sounding track, when I play back my recordings it seems like I can hear every point that I am off pitch by 2-3 cents (due to intonation or a not so perfect bend) whereas I hear professionally recorded guitar melodies and solos where the player is off by close to a 1/4 step (on a bend or certain note) and it does not sound that bad (that is kind of what I mean by almost ineffable quality). Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[Rip]

first off in recording you need to know the basics.
And these freq issues you're having can be because of a number of things.

The most common one is failing to realize that you need to create nitches
and pockets with your different instruments in the freq spectrum so you can hear all the things you want without the "mud"

That guitar sound you love, you might be surprised if you heard it solo'ed
how thin, or how different it sounds compared to when the entire band is mix'ed around it.
There is no need for a guitar in a mix to have these super low freq's. The bass guitar fills that in..and give the illusion
of the guitar sounding thicker. Same goes for the highs in other examples.

if you know those higher end freq's are there on the solo guitar
but you're not hearing them is probably because your rhythm guitar is sucking the life out of those same freq's.

another simple way to create pockets for your instruments is panning them.
You mention a "center cancelling effect" (which im guessing is throwing your mid freq's out of phase to make them disapear in the center, but i could be wrong)..
thats just creating a more fake panned effect. (less stuff in the center)..etc.

the biggest mistake I see rookies make is trying to get a great sound from their instruments being solo'ed and not trying to get their sound great while playing the mix back.

[Soloist]

You are right, that effect is a phase cancellation based effect (like pulling a stereo 1/4" or 1/8" plug half out of the socket). Btw, I tried my brother's 540R yesterday and was absolutely shocked by how much better the sound was than my JCRG-3. The JCRG-3 is so low/lo-mid heavy; although it sounds thick the attack is way too bassy and it results in a "crumbling", synthetic, over processed sound.

Looks like I may either try swapping the pickups in the JCRG-3 or just getting rid of it, in addition to working on recording techniques. My first thought was to cut all the frequencies below about 200-300hz for the guitar but I could not find a good enough EQ effect to do it with on my keyboard, I guess I will start using my VS2000 all the time as it has many more options (though you would be surprised how good some of the audio recordings I have made have sounded coming straight out of my Fantom-X). Thanks for the suggestions I will give it a try, though thankfully just using the other guitar has already resulted in an overall better baseline of the lead/melody guitar sound quality.

[Drew]

Jeez, mixing is an artform and one I'm not even THAT good at, to begin with. I don't even know where to start...

I think a lot of it's probably in your EQ'ing, though - I generally go for a brighter crunchier rhythm tone, with a darker, middier lead sound. The idea is each tone should leave a lot of space for the other. I also usually double track my rhythm parts and pan them hard left and right, then do a single track of lead guitar up the center. I also record each of these tracks as mono tracks, and not stereo. Then I usually do a low pass around 100 hz or so to open up some room for the bass, and a little higher for the lead.

I also usually use different mic's (lately, an Audix i5 for rhythm and a Shure SM-57 for lead), but that doesn't help you much...

I also record leads dry, and add effects (in stereo) in the mix. Believe it or not, this helps clarity a lot (especially if you route the time-based effects to a seperate bus and EQ them a bit to keep them clear).

From the sound of it, editing your patches to tighten up the bass frequencies a bit, and possibly jacking up the upper mids while rounding out the highs and presence, will do wonders for your lead patch.