I spend hours faffing with sounds and never get any playing done.
If I record a direct signal from the guitar to my RME then I can use the reamp box to take a line level signal back out of the RME later and into anything with a high-z input for pickups (amps, preamps, modellers) later. This means you can focus on getting good takes and change the sound to whatever you want later.
With that and my splitter I can line into (in orginal takes or reamped recordings) any combination of 4 of my bits of kits and record the same take with loads of different combinations of gear and settings without having to play it perfectly again and again, which gets very time cosuming and is hard work!
Between this and my PB, 4 mics, tonelab LE, Pod XT, JD10, TTM, Vox VTXL and an amp that HTH and I are going to hammer out, I should be able to realise my ultimate plan - double track through 2 or more things at once so I can use lower gain for clarity, but have the sounds add for thickness and blend two or more tones in a way that plays to the strengths of the seperate tones and masks their weaknesses, rather that do the same with 4-tracking, which is also onerous to get all the takes to be good and very unforgiving, since two tracks panned in a stereo field can tollerate maybe 5 to 10ms of differential in attack, but out of the same speaker even less that 5ms between note strikes fouls the attack of both notes and makes muddy sloppy sound (yes, I've measured this by zooming in in cubase on what sounds synced and clear and what doesnt).