I'm interested (if anyone has any info) in Brendan O'Brien's recording techniques. I particularly like the guitar sound he gets on Stone temple Pilot's song "Down" ("No. 4"). Any info?

I can't help you out with the question but at the time of this post, 66% of EA members found that Brendan O Brien was not crap.
http://electrical.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 4aeaeec4e9

I heard he commits a lot to tape.

By that do you mean many overdubs? Also, how many tracks of guitar would you say he might use on a tune?

Nah, I mean like compression and EQ to tape... I mean, I can't really say he does X amount of overdubs, I'm sure there's no formula and also I'm sure his style has changed depending on when he was a producer or an engineer for projects, but if you hear 2 guitars there's usually 2... I dunno what I'm getting at, you have to pick it apart I guess...

A lot of the bands I've heard him work with were great sounding bands to begin with. So of course it always helps that the players are great and their sound is good too.

This is all the stuff everyone will tell you about anyone I suppose.. but I dunno, he seems to get a good clean sound usually.

-Ya can't make Ice Cream outta Shit-

isn't printing effects to tape usually regarded as a british production technique? i mean, not that they invented it or anything, but i read somewhere that it is typically brits who are not afraid to commit that kind of thing to tape. for someone like me, i have to in order to free up the aux sends for whatever on the mixdown, but i was just curious and thought it odd that this was a "british phenom."

Are you saying that this effects the finished sound? As opposed to adding the FX in the mix?

Yes, this would affect the finished sound. As in, instead of taking the signal from the mike pre and sending it to tape, sometimes he uses compression and or EQ before he even hits the tape that way there's less to do in the mix. I would imagine subtractive EQ and minimal compression or more like a saftey net compression for tracking.

i agree with what clyde wrote about picking things apart. i may be crucified for saying this in the "tech" forum, but all this technical crap is based on what you hear. it bums me out that people get so wrapped up in things like compression and eq and the like. while all of these things are amazing tools for us, our ears are the most powerful things that we have. who cares what your compression ratio is or what you do to eq something; if it sounds right then thats the end of it. please don't fall into the trap that so many people fall into. just listen to everything that you can get your hands on and trust your ears. they won't lie.
moving forward; i think the british/american eq thing is something like this (although it probably has more to do with the individual then the country)...the british boost to tape and americans cut to tape. this means that the british supposedly will boost frequencies to tape and americans will cut them. generally it's not so big of a deal to boost lower frequencies to tape, but when you start boosting mid and high frequencies to tape(actual magnetic tape), you end up also boosting the tape hiss. this may or may not sound good to your ears. whichever one sounds better is the one to use.
anyway, thats my two cents. hope it helps.

boosting high frequencies wouldn't increase tape hiss, but maybe the electronic noise from the board or the preamps.
if there is any effect on tape hiss with high EQ boosts, it's that in mixdown you might want to reverse your change and reduce some high frequencies... in which case you would REDUCE the amount of tape hiss (i heard of this technique in a beginners guide to 4-track recording)