So I was thinking about a song I'm working on that moves through three distinct guitar feels/tones. I was gonna mess with it after the fact but I'd kind of like to set up some GR5 automation so I can nail the feel with the different tones already present. Here's what I envision. 2 tracks set to the same input from my interface. Cleaner tone amp sim on one track and a dirty screecher one on the other. The song would start off with cleaner amp more present and with a bit more gain. When the vocal section starts I'd go almost fully clean tone (turn down the gain VIA automation in GR5) then for the last part set the TRACK automation to turn down the clean amp and crank up the dirty one. The song is improv and I want it to flow properly so it needs to be done in one complete take (not punched in and out). Is there any reason this will cause me problems? Anything I should be aware of? Thanks and I hope you are all having a great weekend.

hmm... maybe I should have tossed this in the Techniques forum. Sorry. I'm just so used to posting here... and those guys tend to play rough. :-(

Can't see any particular problems to watch out for.

I've done pretty much the same thing using a split feed from the (hardware) guitar fx chain to a pair of sansamps, each to it's own Sonar input, and monitoring via Sonar with the track volumes automated to switch between them  (the track volumes, of course, determining how loud the track's echo is) then replacing the "foldback" automation later with one that fits the mix better.

The only problem I found was getting the foldback (track echo) levels balanced right for recording, which took a bit of time (and was a quite different balance to the one I ended up with at mixdown).

Beepster you shouldn't have any problems. All you need to do is provide X1 with two separate inputs.

You don't really need to record three tracks. You can record one track, clone the track however many times you want then add your effects as you like.

If your goal is to seperate the tracks to give a stereo feel, I would not do this. Using the same track for either side does not work really. For that, it's best to record the same part twice and seperate those.

If you clone those two seperated tracks, you can pan them let's say 70r, 75r, 80r for one side. Make the 70r a little more bassy than the 75r but the 80r, make it more trebley. That will give it a wider feel. The other side just the same but 70L, 75L and 80L. If it sounds right, I go as far as to slide the 70r or L by -10 or less ticks. Leave the 75L or R where it is and the 80L or R by +10 or less ticks. That will fatten it up nice.
 
You can do the same for leads but pan them center. 10r, 0 and 10L having the bassy one in the middle and trebley ones on either side.

Just a few little tricks.

HTH.

Sorry guys... I got distracted by some other stuff and have been kind of spaced. I should have explained what I'm doing a little better. Very cool and useful advice though. I'm just going to be using a single physical input (for now) but using that for two separate tracks each with their own GR amp sim setup and then set GR automation on both and then volume automation on the tracks to blend the two. It's just so I can have the approximate effects settings while I record so I can get the right feel for each section down properly. I think it will work if I can use the single physical input to send to the separate tracks. GR and Sonar (and my automation programming) should do the rest. Kind of a neat experiment and then I can just tweak everything after the fact. Currently though I'm working on something really stupid for the songs forum. It's a lot more simplistic but fun. I'll try to explain this current topic/idea a little more tomorrow but brain no worky for that right now. Cheers and thanks.

No problem. You can absolutely record the same input to as many tracks as you need. Sonar will however only create one file on the hard drive IIRC.

Yeah... I have done that quite by accident. Had more than one guitar track set up to record,,,,left them all armed by mistake and waaa laaaa.... ended up with the same guitar on 2 tracks..... 

I think, if you did this.....with a different setup for an amp sim in each track it would sound pretty good. Kinda like using 2 amps paralleled on stage...which I have done for a fatter sound. 

@Tom Riggs... Cool and using the same audio clip is fine. If I was attempting this AFTER the take I'd be just cloning the track anyway so it'll be the same result but I can have the effects/sim tweaks already in place as I record. This is gonna be fun. Like having my own sound guy/guitar tech tweaking stuff as I play. :-)

@Guitarhacker... I used to use my Line 6 dual channel head to record stereo guitar tracks. It was cool because you could have two different amp models running at the same time and either blend them into one output or send them out to two separate outputs (XLR outs at that). I'd usually set one head to be more bottomy and growly/dirty sounding and the other for a bright high tone. Once I got the tracks into Nuendo I'd pan each slightly opposite of each other. It sounded pretty good even though the sims on the amp weren't all that great on their own. I'll be doing stuff similar to that except using GR5 for the sims. Less cables and it sounds way better than the Line 6 sims. However I do want to pull out that Line 6 when I have more room and experience and see how well it'll work with my new set up. Back in the day I had GR2 or maybe even GR1 and it sucked so I NEEDED the head and external effects but now I could use the head to dial in an ultra clean tone and then tweak it with GR5. Again more fun experiments. Cheers.