Rule of thumb for any sound situation, live or recorded: give yourself a limited palette so you can sound consistent. If you want an album to sound like it's a

Rule of thumb for any sound situation, live or recorded: give yourself a limited palette so you can sound consistent. If you want an album to sound like it's all one piece, you use the same instrument and processing for it all the way through -- except for that one time that you want to highlight it. In visual terms, you want the grass on the left side of the painting to be the same as the grass on the right side of the painting, unless you deliberately want to say something about the grass. You should only be drawing people's attention to what you want them to be looking at.