Easiest to work with low-volume recording solution?

[Tormentum]

So... For the purposes of writing and recording music, I want to be able to get some decent high-gain guitar sounds without giving my insane neighbors a reason to call the police.

I know there are a zillion threads on here discussing the relative merits of the AxeFX, POD, etc, but I'd like to add a requirement of my own:

I don't want to do a lot of tweaking.

In fact I'd rather have a less "good sounding" solution that's easier to just dial in a workable tone than something that's potentially better but requires going through 200 amp models and playing with settings for weeks in order to get there.

It's in that vein that I've sometimes thought about just getting a tube preamp (Marshall JMP-1, ENGL E530), going into a Palmer box of some sort and calling it a day. Maybe this idea would work better substituting impulses for the Palmer but then I fear going into plugin tweakland and I have to say there's nothing I hate more about recording than having to mouse around on the computer when I'm holding my guitar and wanting to write.

Right now I've got Pod Farm II and have gotten some OK things out of it, but I hate hate hate the interface. Maybe I'm wrong but it barely seems to have any keyboard support and I find the interface really cumbersome when I'm trying to get a sound set up with guitar in hand. I'm going direct with my guitar into an Apogee Ensemble's DI input.

I should add that I have no real interest in FX as part of this idea.

Feedback anyone? I'm willing to try anything, even just using what I've already got with a different workflow. I'm also willing to spend real money.

 

[Fama]

Don't know if this is any help, but here's my 2 cents.

I did this http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10138888/hassuhevi.mp3 in about 3 hours start to finish. That includes jamming out the riffs, recording 2 tracks of guitars and 1 track of bass for every part, editing, programming the drums and mixing. I know it isn't very well mixed, the bass is probably way outta control and flubby and whatnot, and it's very muddy in general (went overboard with a multiband compressor on the 2bus). But still, all in 3 hours. I'll probably take another shot tomorrow with fresh ears.

One thing you should understand about high gain guitar tones is that the guitars itself aren't everything. Add good drums (SD2 here, works great) and bass too (won't be too good with no bass at all), and you can get pretty far with tones that would sound terrible on their own.

But still, I got (IMO it's usable, not the best thing ever, but ok to me) that guitar tone literally in a few minutes. TSE 808, LeCto and LeCab. Just slap a few good all-around impulses on (s-preshigh and asem recto in my case) and tweak the LeCto for a minute or so. It's rather spongy and muddy, but I think it works in the mix.

The bass tone (which I guess contributes pretty much to a guitar tone) is a pitch shifted guitar, basic 2 tracks, one lowpassed compressed clean DI signal and the other a Juicy 77 distorted signal (HP around 350, LP around 2.1k).

Oh, and if you think the clip sucks (I've been listening to it more or less for 3½ hours now so can't really tell ) feel free to ignore my ramblings

Edit: Oh right, kinda missed the point there But yeah, what I ment to say was, you can get away with free plugins (or the Pod Farm in your case) on guitar. I say concentrate on getting ok guitar tones and accompanying drum/bass tones.