Ok, this is really helpful for the drums!
I bribed the drummer from my band with beer to learn a few new cover songs and come over for an evening of recording. He's killer... he knocked out a couple of the songs in just one take, which was pretty amazing considering that we had never played the songs together at all. He plays an older Pearl kit, seems pretty nice, but probably could use a serious tuning.
But the truth is, we've always had a hard time nailing good drum tones on home recordings (although this is definitely the best we've ever gotten). Some reasons: the drums aren't tuned well, the lack of decent mics & such for recording, the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly, and (the worst part) we've recorded everything in an unfishished basement with pretty much no sound isolation.
I did dig out the Hendrix & Ozzy CD's you referenced, just for comparison. I get what you're saying about the drum tone on my tracks... from a gear & setup perspective, I think what we were working with was probably closer to Hendrix's setup than Ozzy's. But, I think a little EQ & compression could tighten the drums up a bit, so I'll pay attention to that next time I sit down in my studio.
For reference, there's probably about 4-5 hours put into Sweet Child, divided up as follows:
~ 45 minutes to get the drums right
~ 2 hours for all guitars (electrics, acoustics, bass)
~ 1.5 hours for vocals (vocals, like drums, are another area I've always struggled with recording, but at least they're a lot easier to figure out than drums!)
--B
