Adjusting stompbox whilst getting PC to play guitar ! ?

Archived from groups: rec.music.makers.guitar,rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Hi,

I'm sitting here trying to get some nice sounds out of my
multi-effects stomp-box, and it's a bit frustrating as I need three
hands ! - two to play the guitar and another to tweak the effects box
as I hunt for the sweet tones. Alternately playing, then tweaking,
then playing etc is hardly efficient and frankly, a pain in the ass as
you can't truly 'hear' the changes you make as you're stopping all the
time !

I was just wondering how other guitarists do it ?

I had a plan to record some clean guitar into my PC and then play that
back through the effects unit, allowing me to tweak with two hands !!
I'm recording at 48kHz, 16Bit, and tried the mic-in and line-in inputs
(both directly and via the effects box set to 'bypass' to compensate
for the fact I don't have a DI box), but the clarity just isn't there
in the recording compared to playing it live.

Anyone got any ideas / suggestions that will either enable the audio
quality of my recorded guitar to be as close as possible to the 'live'
version, or the address of a doctor that can fit an extra arm ? :-)

Many thanks,

Cheers,

Kev.