i've never really liked the sound of a di guitar w/ amp modeling software. any reason you aren't mic'in it up?

There is a lot of confusion about the difference between a DI box, stomp boxes and guitar recording processors. All are DI boxes but all are not appropriate for recording without some other ancillary equipment. Just like owl said, I'm not really hot on recording electric guitars with a DI box that is not being amplified through a speaker to begin with. For example, you could purchase a basic amplifier. That is an amplifier without a preamplifier input section. If you plug your guitar into a DI box, you could then plug your DI box into the basic amplifier.

If you want to record a guitar without an amplifier and speaker, you'll need a recording DI box that features amplifier/speaker modeling emulations. Such as the POD series of recording DI boxes that feature amplifier/speaker modeling emulations. You can record your guitar direct to a track with just a DI box but then you will want to take that track and "re-amp" it through a recording DI box with amplifier/speaker modeling, looped back into your computer to record to another track that would be used in the mix without the original recorded DI box track. You could also utilize amplifier/speaker emulated software plug-ins on that awful sounding DI guitar track.

Making sense in the nonsensical world
Ms. Remy Ann David

Here are some suprisingly good free guitar amp & stomp box simulator VST plug-ins:

http://www.simulanalog.org/guitarsuite.htm

:D