Scratch tracks and recording with a different sound

So recently I have been experimenting with recording tracks with a different sound to that which I intend to have in the final mix. The reason for this is that I'm trying to separate my concerns when it comes to the sound versus the performance. When I record guitar I like to record with a very bass heavy, muddy, oversaturated tone. Why? Well quite frankly because I play better with that sound. I grew up playing guitars in my bedroom with no other instruments and I got used to the sound of the guitar taking up all the frequency spectrum because I had no other instruments to play with it. When I play with that type of sound I get a really good performance because it feels natural to me. The problem I have been finding though is that this isn't always the best sound when it comes to mix time. In particular I struggle to get the drums and guitars to gel without muddying up the entire mix. It occurred to me that what I really want to do is record with the tone I like but have the actual tone be something more fitted to the track. The way I handle this is to record a dry version of the guitar input to the daw and then re-record the amp tracks, from this dry tone, later. I monitor through my usual guitar setup so what I hear while i'm recording is my familiar tone. This is re-amping as we all know and love and nothing spectacular. What to me was the revelation was the idea that I didn't have to actually record in anything like the tone I planned on having in the end mix. For a start the tone I like to record with is a Marshall and the track I was working on ended up using a Mesa Boogie. This got me wondering if other guitarists have this same problem of hearing a good tone as something that is virtually unusable when it comes to mix time, or whether this is just a very peculiar affliction on my part?

I remember listening to an interview with Celldweller and Blue Stahli where they both talked about making demo versions of tracks, and then changing them later. They use crappy sounds to begin with to get the idea down and then work on the better version later. I find this really interesting because it is exactly what i'm discovering as a way to work, you are treating the different stages of the process as separate. Writing is writing and producing is producing.

Some thoughts from working on old tracks

So recently I've been working on some material that I largely wrote in 2013, some metal tracks. I have two of the tracks out already and what i'm doing currently is recording the vocals and mixing the tracks together. What is interesting is that from the time they were written to the point when I recently started working on them, I had lost a large amount of the initial drive I had when I wrote them. Working on them again it has come back and i've been able to more easily write the lyrics and vocal lines than I would have if i'd just dove straight into them back then. The moral here is that sometimes music, even digital music, can be left to mature. This is because music is an expression of the self and the self matures over time. Obviously you can take this too far and end up constantly reworking things and never finishing them, i'm not proposing that. A close friend I knew had been working on the same album for close to a decade without ever finishing it or putting it out and the net effect was largely detrimental to his health. Doing and finishing certainly breed productivity and improvement but sometimes you do need to let things cool for a bit while you figure out what to do with them. I have been working on other tracks in the meantime and for the most part the tracks I did back then were in a good enough state that not too much work was required. I think that is possibly the key, its often that final finishing touch that can be difficult to see from the outset, even if the rest of the process went very smoothly.

As an aside the tracks can be found at https://soundcloud.com/pipoano/sets/scenes-of-violence