Hey Josh, this is Josh from In the Silence. When I'm doing demo's at home, I generally try to get the signal as close to full volume as possible without peaking/distorting and then add compression if needed afterwards. With distorted guitars, in Guitar Rig I don't find it necessary, however it can be helpful with clean guitar sounds. I use presonus firestudio project with Studio One. That's just me! You can try different things of course and see what works for you. It's also helpful to not over saturate the distortion in the individual tracks, and layer the guitars. Some guys will do a left guitar, a right, and a center. On our album A Fair Dream Gone Mad, we did a left and right with one amp (my mesa dual rec roadster), and then another left and right with another amp (a single rec on channel 1 with distortion pedal). We had the gain at about halfway, and when layered it sounds really thick without being too mushy. That's of course using real amps and mic's, but the same principles apply with guitar rig.
