There's different ways to handle this. I use Sampletank 3. It has a full effects suite so there's none of this going on, if I have a guitar on track 4, channel 4 (I try to keep them the same) ST has it's own guitar cabinet sims and other effects and it only goes on that channel.

The other possibility is to not bother with any effects until you render your midi tracks to audio. Now your audio effects plugins are used. You set up different ones for each track. I know it's fun to keep it all in midi and mess around with stuff but as you're finding out it gets confusing.

You're experienced enough I suspect you've done a few studio sessions over the years. They usually record you dry and feed some effects into your headphones if you need that but the actual recording is dry and unaffected. Adding effects is for the mixdown. The exception was lead guitars, they have their amps and pedals and want that sound on the recording.

But over the last few years I've read that guitarists and bass players use so many sims it changes how recordings are done. Some will not have an amp on stage, they go direct through the PA and/or recording console using an amp sim and they can just push a button and get an entirely different sound without screwing around with amp controls or pedals. The stage or monitor sound is effected but the recording is dry because the engineer and/or the player can mess with all the different sims later. This is exactly why many guitarists on the forum requested DI guitar Real Tracks so now you see lots of them, adding these different amp sims can drastically change the original dry recording.

Of course none of this is written in stone, it's called whatever works for you. But I find it fun to occasionally read some recording forums to get an idea of what's going on lately.

Anyway, after I render my dry tracks to audio I do a Save As so as not to change the original midi or SEQ file in case I want to go back to it.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.