Quick and painless guitar recording

Line 6 always put out some fine toys for us riffmasters. I just got a chance to play with it's PC recording system for the guitar. The guitarPort riff tracker is an allinone piece where you can do quick records of your music. It is a piece of separate hardware, that lets you connect your guitar to a PC, much cleaner than the line-in jack adapter i used to use!!! The GuitarPort software gives a modeling of amps, effects boxes and effects rack pieces. The main idea of this piece is not modelling or simulation, it is purely for a guitarist who wants to play and record a guitar. Thats the whole concept, and it works great. It is a complete hardware and software enviroment solution right out of the box so no tech head system configuration and adulteration is neded. Included in this package is the GuitarPort unit which is powered by a laptop or desktop via the USB, and this recording interface, like i said, is much better than other units that are sound card dependent. It has all the connections and hookups needed to record and track the guitar and you can hear the results using speakers or headphones for late night wizardry. The well written GuitarPort software has a system copiied right from the PODxt, a well tested unit.
The recording software: RiffWorks was made specifically for this hardware and is not a generic recorder tracker like other companies try to push off on us., RiffWorks is so easy to use and before you know it you will be laying down all your monster guitar ideas and riffs, and creating multi layers of lead after lead. I like the concept of setting a tempo from a sttrum of the guitar. It has a cool auto tracking feature, that keeps on going and doesn't make you stop in the middle and lose your idea, so you can track a solo or you can record take after take or layer parts without a pause. One thing that leaves something to be desired is the built in drum machine. The "Instant Drummer" mode lets you add live drum tracks. Pick a groove, give it a speed, it starts to play a drum track and fills that is supposed to sound like a studio drum kit. You can pick from different drummer sessions and change the amount of differences, intensity and ambience.
No matter how hard i tried, i couldn't get a harder rock sound than a 1980's Billy Idol studio drum machine sound. No Zeppelin to be enjoyed here no matter how much you tweak it.
The effects are a little better, you can apply up to 7 different effects per track. The distortion sounds are lively and realistic on headphones, but don't try to use this for a 'musician; on stage, it will fool no one and sound like a joke. Teach your brother some barre chords and get a cheap Marshall!!Final mixdown is done to WAV files, nice and clean, no MP3 generated nonsense.
A nice toy, but not a serious production tool.