I want to avoid panning rhythm guitars left and right.

I’m working an emo/shoegaze-y project with some post-rock influences. In the past, I’ve usually double tracked and panned my rhythm guitars but I’m trying to get away from that and give things a more stripped back and live feel, along the lines of bands like Mono and Godspeed!. It’ll also hopefully push me to be a bit more creative and thoughtful in my arrangements.

I’m planning to have a rhythm part and a lead part, so I was just wondering if anyone had advice for how to approach this when I get to the mixing stage? I obviously would still like to have a sense of scale and depth but I usually found panning my rhythm guitars hard left and right to sound too big for songs that should sound more intimate.

Currently, I’m recording all my electric guitars into a DI and using an amp sim.