i would take your pitch shifter, phaser, octaver and tremelo out of your loop,
put them in front of your amp.

Thanks for the tip.  Hopefully I'll get everything sorted so I can put whatever I wherever I want - that's the goal!
 
 

Not sure I understand your impedance concerns for input. As long as your input plugs are the same there is no impedance concern right? If you're going XLR to 1/4 you'd need a high to low Z adapter plug, but 1/4 to 1/4, you're good to go right?
this thread has inspired me to try a few things I never considered before with my Johnson Millennium.
It has a send return loop. I've never tried a send return loop on anything to be honest. So I can use my amp's effects in Sonar with that?... interesting. I will be soldering some cords or taking a drive to radio shack.
 My amp does DI well, but I didn't understand how to use it for recording for a long time until I finally broke down and rtfm. The step I was missing was I had to turn global cabinet emu on and use the XLR outputs.
 
 

ohgrant
 but 1/4 to 1/4, you're good to go right?

 
Nope. There is "line" level and there is the level that comes out of your guit. Line level is what comes out of mixers, interfaces and the like and are accepted by line level inputs.
 
The ouput from your guitar is much lower than line level and needs a special input (like the ones on guitar amps or the HiZ/Instrument inputs on interfaces, DI boxes, etc). If those devices have line level outputs THAT can then be sent to line level inputs like those on a mixer.
 
If you have a DI box laying around and a mixer check it out. Plug your guitar straight into the line input of the mixer and record something. Then do the same thing using the DI box.
 
Without the DI box the signal you get is pretty much useless.
 
Edit: and that's completely ignoring the possibility your equipment inputs/outputs/cables may be stereo/balanced 1/4" cables (Tip Ring Sleeve vs. Tip Sleeve).

Just to reinforce what Beep said ...
 
The amp's guitar input is HiZ; high impedance, designed to take a small signal.  The effects send/return are LINE level I/O, which is lower impedance with a larger signal.
 
--
I've used direct out with my amps a lot.  Either in-built capability, or with a Red Box 5.  My experiments today are to come up with a more normalized signal chain when combining amp hardware with effect software.
 
I think what I've discovered is that a small investment in a proper line/HiZ device will leave me with complete flexibility.
 
The most important thing that has come out of this is being able to assess Sonar's performance with all of the in & out.  I'm quite impressed with the fact that I haven't noticed any latency introduced by all of this.

Beepster
Jeff gave some good places to look but forum user tlw will hopefully come by. He has been an endlessly useful resource on such matters for me and can only assume he's a guitar (and general stringed instrument) player who's been wrangling with this stuff for decades.

Well, thanks for the compliment Bit, but re-ampings something I claim little to no expertise in other than saying I think the big issue isn't impedance but volts and amps. Guitars are fussy about what impedance they're plugged into but amps generally don't mind so much what's plugged into them.

Guitars output what, millivolts. +4dBU levels can be a couple of volts or more, and -10dBU is still much hotter than a guitar. It's not that a +4dBU signal will destroy the amp input stage or anything (I hope), but it will totally and instantly saturate the amp circuit. Winding the line signal reaching the amp right down may or may not be low enough to get acceptable results. Hence re-amp boxes, and the most useful of all are the ones that let you split the signal so one output feeds your amp and another feeds the mixer/interface so a "bare" copy of the guitar or bass can be recorded at the same time.

Unless you want to use a fuzz face or similar basic fuzz or booster that reacts very strongly to the guitar tone and volume pots. They really do need an actual guitar plugged into them to work properly because the guitar becomes part of their circuit in a deep amd meaningful way (which is possibly why the emulations of them range between poor and hopeless).

Other than that I defer to Danny Danzi and people more likely to want to re-amp than I am.

Hmm, mixer in storage, big old ugly Sun, to big for area. I have a Sans amp Para Q DI box if that's what you mean.  I'll have to read the manual about what's balanced. Don't really have my brain wrapped around how I'm going to do the send return/routing into my TC impact twin, I'm going to have to study a few manuals to see what's balanced and what's not.
My big lesson in impedance came at a high cost years ago when I had badly mismatched ohms in monitors and main amp.
The monitors were a pair of old Peavey with 6 mids. For some reason the cabinet were something weird like 3 ohms and the amp was 4 or 8, can't remember, sounded great for a while then finals in the amp blew before I realized.
Are there any such hazards to the equipment if there is an impedance issue in the input stage?  

I think (and seriously I don't know) that the risk of damage to equipment comes from the input that's expecting a low output from a guitar thus draws too much (or maybe sends too much) from the source device... thus potentially blowing the source device (not the input device/amp).
 
I have no idea though. I would just never hook up a line level output to a guitar amp/hiz input.
 
As for the experiment of hooking a guitar up to a line level input then through I DI if your pedal does have line out capability (a lot of Line6 stuff does) then you could just plug directly from the guitar into a line input on your interface, record it and then try it again through the Line6 (using the line level output).
 
Even easier though would just record the difference between the Line input and then any HiZ inputs on the interface.
 
Actually I just ran into an old problem of mine again where my bass, for some bizarre reason, ouputs WAY too hot for the HiZ input on my interface. If I switch to the Line input and crank up the trim I get a reasonably volume level BUT the sound is garbage.
 
This is all very odd because it's just a stock Squier P-Bass single coild bass pickup. I have no idea why it ouputs that hot. I eventually remembered that the best signal I can get (using the gear I have on hand) is to run the bass into my old Line6 Duoverb head and record the DI/Balanced line outputs.

 My main DAW interface is a TC impact twin. It has two front inputs that are both XLR and 1/4, I've read for balanced and unbalanced on those. That's what I use for DI if I want the amp's stereo FX. I've been getting better results recently using my SM7b with a reflection filter to record for just mono.
Mostly interested in looping to PC to use my lappy and Ik Stealth pedal for even more variety of sound live. I love most of my amps emu's but the one thing it seriously lacks is a good Metal tone. I've been using one of IK's Engl amps for that in line with my amp. All my amp's heavy presets sound like mud to me by comparison.
I don't have a line 6 interface anymore, but they were kind enough to give me a great price on the ilock version of the platinum bundle since I was a gold bundle owner. Pod Farm also sounds great in the amp too but I'd never feel comfortable letting the ilock leave the house.
  

Impedance mismatches eg at output devices feeding input devices should not cause any damage.  Only possible sound changes.  Impedance mismatches at high power amps feeding wrong speaker impedances certainly can cause trouble.  But we are not dealing with that here.
 
The Little Labs Pepper looks like a very cool device.  But at your US dollars it is between $600-$700 ($1200 here in Oz) so it is one very expensive device.  It does do a lot granted but you may not need all those features either.
 
Radial make a basic re amp box for around $99 your dollars and $199 for a more complex model that offers a few extra features.  (which look useful too)
 
Apart from dropping the level right down from your interface to guitar levels a re-amp box presents the same high impedance an actual guitar does to the amp.  This can effect the sound between the source signal and the very front end stages of a guitar amp.
 
And Beeps no I am not a guitarist but I have had experience re-amping a few times and it can be fun and very cool to do.
 
And BobF you have got a lot of pedals there.  I am hoping you can totally bypass the effects loop  (where you have so many pedals connected)  if you need to preserve the dry sound a bit more.  Isn't there one nice guitar effects processor that does it all that just connects to your amp effects loop? Then you can just plug your guitar straight to the amp.  (which might actually sound best)
 
For example you have got your guitar connected to the Wah pedal so the guitar output impedance/Wah input impedance/input stage combination is setting the sound for the whole chain that comes later.  Your guitar might not sound its best plugged direct to a Wah pedal first in line like that.  Have you thought of that?