Rerouting thru a guitar pedal

[glpetrov]

Hello everyone and hopefully I am addressing my issue in the correct subforum.

So I use Reaper as a DAW and Focusrite Saffire 24 Pro DSP as an audio interface. I have a guitar pedal (Ibanez SM7 smashbox) and I do the following:

I record my clean guitar signal directly into Reaper by connecting my guitar with a cable going straight into input 1 of the audio interface. Afterwards I reroute the Reaper track to the output of the audio interface and I connect that output with a guitar cable to the input of my pedal which I connect with a cable thru the output of the pedal to the audio interface input. My idea is to reroute the clean guitar track thru the pedal and record the distroted guitar onto a separate track so I can tweak the pedal knobs in real time for achieving the sound that I desire. Otherwise I have to play a chord and reach for the pedal knobs to adjust. Not enough hands. So when I do this all I hear on the distorted track is noise. When I plug my guitar into the pedal input and then I connect the pedal output to the audio interface input it works and I hear the distorted sound. Otherwise all I hear is noise. Anyone have any idea why that is? Much appreciated.

[stoopicus]

I'd simply take it a step farther and find a good software emulation of the pedal. Not sure of the SM-7 but there's lots of good Tube Screamers out there.

[BertKoor]

Check the patching.
Is the recorded track in your DAW routed to a separate output, another than the Main 1-2 pair?
You should see the meters moving in the Focusrite control panel...

[lfm]

Whatever output is used, see to that fader make signal peaks below -12 dBFs or there about.
- that would be in the range a guitar has going into pedal

Then there is a risk for feedback loop, so if mains out as Bertkoor said, pan to listen mono on left channel alone while doing this reamp thing.
- guitar track that goes out, pan that all right, then through pedal and to input
- then pan new track for record all left, so not fed back to same out as guitar track goes out

Something like that....

[Acid Mitch]

I find it best to use a reamp box and preamp. The reamp box goes between your daws output and guitar pedal. It changes line level signals to instrument level and then the preamp goes after the pedal to bring the level back to line level. If your audio interface has a hi z input you can use that instead of the preamp.

[glpetrov]

Thank you all for the great suggestions