Deciding on the best place for a microphone on an electric guitar or bass cabinet can be numbingly boring for a player - having to repeat a lick over and over while the engineer tries to find the best spot.

If you're both the player and the engineer, it can be even more difficult, trying to be objective about the sound you hear while also making tone and mic adjustments.

Here's a solution: record some guitar and bass playing through a direct box, straight into your DAW. Now set up the direct track so it feeds the amp through a reamp box. Set the DAW to loop playback and let it play the guitar for you while you make the adjustments.

This trick also works when setting up effects during mixdown, setting compressors and limiters, EQ, just about any situation where you need to hear a particular passage over and over while you listen and make changes.