Guitarist won't turn down

Hey guys! So, I've got this problem with the other guitarist in my band. But before that, a little background on us.

We're a five-piece hard rock band from the South East (Philippines) called Imelda [http://soundcloud.com/imeldahardrockombo/great-wall] (not related to the Filipino First Lady at all) and I've been playing with the three other guys (the drummer, the lead guitarist, and our poet-vocalist) for almost five years now. Recently, about 8 or 9 months ago we recruited a second guitarist who was a great common friend between the four of us on the premise that it'd be great having another head in the band. We've been doing shows with him (the new guitarist) for the past few months and well, I'm not really satisfied with his performance. Don't get me wrong, he's a good guitarist but I meant "performance" in a different sense.

Now here's where my problem starts. The second guitarist, really likes to turn it up. When I say turn it up, I mean TURN IT UP and he doesn't only do it during rehearsals but also during shows. For a while, we've just shrugged it off as an "adjustment period" but months have passed and it still hasn't changed. We had a rehearsal and show yesterday (as of this writing) and during the rehearsal we told him to turn it down 'cause I couldn't hear myself well, we couldn't hear the other guitarist also. When we told him this, he just told us to "turn it up some more" and of course we didn't want to do that because we'd lose all clarity since it's a big thing for us to be a solid unit with just the right amount of volume for each other. Another problem we have with him is that he tries to be the band leader and takes my responsibilities and forces his ideas on us 'cause it's "cool". I mean, we don't throw ideas out the window like that, we give a try and see if it works. One such idea was to play the outro of one of our songs in double time; we tried it out and it didn't work but he kept on telling us to do it. We just shrugged it off to avoid conflict.

Now at the gig, we told him to watch his levels and he cranked his amp again. I told guitarist 1 to tell him to tone down and when he did he just said, "Tell them to turn it up, then."

Now, how do I deal with an attitude like this? We've been meaning to talk to him but we're not sure on how to approach him because he might think we're ganging up on him and we wouldn't want that.

 

We wrote this song which had dual guitar solos but now (on our Soundcloud it's called Selfish Woman and essentially needed a second guitar for that and it's a sh***y recording but wth), it seems like he doesn't give enough sonic space to any of us when we play live. Especially in songs where we don't need the extra wanking, he just wanks away even when we've told him numerous times to watch the wanking and to lessen it too.

 

I really don't think he's going to walk but we've already pointed out to him a couple of times that he's just too freaking loud and it hurts our ears already. We've come to a point where two out of the four us kind of want him out already. But, we're still holding on the the hope that maybe we can get through a good serious non-threatening talk.

 

It's about to get to that point and we're not really sure how to talk to him since we're holding out on hope that maybe he could turn down and lessen the volume and wanking after we give him a good talk.

 

HAHAHA This made laugh. But, yeah. Kinda the stereotypical guitarist. Kinda thinks bass is easy and just like "that" and he has this habit of playing MY parts on the guitar and doubling it even if we already told him to stop doubling my parts. ._.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what happens! The drummer tells us what to add and what to decrease. It just so happens that mr. guitarist turns it down then turns it back up again while we're playing and his reason is that, "I can't hear myself" and if he can't hear himself, what more us? It's like he'll drown us out. Idk how to bring it up with him when I've done so twice already.

 

We actually use plugs too while practicing but he just really won't lessen the volume.

 

There are times he's louder than all of us so yeaaaaaahhhh...

 

Actually, this isn't the first time I've heard that comment from another musician 'cause Guitarist #1 has four hands to play with. Figuratively, of course.