Quote: "When I record on our Portastudio I just run the guitar straight in through the pedal and add some reverb and adjust the EQ as necessary. Needless to say it doesn't exactly sound amazing."
Yeah, thats pretty much my 1998 setup: guitar--->dist fx--->line rec.
Quote: "I hear using an amp->mic setup when recording guitar sounds better, though I haven't tried it yet. Any advice?"
I have heard that, and have tried that as well, but that setup comes down to having serious equipment like a really really good amp and phenominal multiple mics, one on the speaker and one a few feet away, then theres the whole "open mic" issue to deal with. I dont use that setup since I dont have the proper quality equip for it (especially the mics) and these days, with how good the dsp is, its almost not necessary unless youre trying to achieve a particular specific ambience with that setup.
Your setup is fine (direct line) like how I did my newer stuff, but the biggest best diff you can make is getting a good set of effects in between the guitar and the rec deck. Also dont forget that on the newer plush I had the Ozone Mastering (Demo) effect attached in Sonar, and that made a big difference. It gave it that thick rich sound (and some crackle
)
I didnt want to spend a million bucks on a thousand pedals or racks or whatever so I tried out a few multi effect pedal boxes and decided on the GNX3. That would be my best advice since for the money you cant beat a multi box. Theres like 10 or 12 or so sep effects, and 100 presets that are various mixes of those effects for certain genre's of music, or you can create your own presets, and theres even Cabinet Modelling so you can mess with how the virtual amplifier sounds (say tubes vs solid, Marshall stacks vs fender floor amps etc etc). Also these things tend to have all of the possible ports needed. I can pass standard 3-prong mics thru mine, as well as all sorts of various ins and outs, even midi. I havent looked in a while at prices and whats available but if you do a little research im sure you can find a good deal on a good multi that will be well worth the money and will improve the recorded guitar sound immesnsely. At the time the gnx3 went for around $400 iirc, but if you compare that to what it would cost to buy each effect and all the other stuff its well worth it. And it translates to a live setup no fuss. If you do go towards a multi setup make sure you actually go to the shop and play thru them and compare them that way, to make the final decision.
Second thing i'd recommend is a computer based tracking setup. You have limitless tracks, and the amount of free and commercial dsp modules is simply phenominal. Mixing, editing, retaking are all made soooo much easier compared to a hw box (like my old 8 digital)
Then of course there are cool mastering tool$ for when you get really serious
I didnt fork the cash for the Ozone btw, it was good but I hadnt looked at other choices by the time it expired, and I wasnt too keen on how attaching a master the final bus could wreck other aspects of the mix. But again I didnt fully "learn" the tool at that time so its hard to say.
But to summarize: good effects + good recording platform will do wonders, you clearly have the skills part taken care of
My DBP plugins page is now hosted [href]
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