I was just trying to figure out reaper, plugged in my interface and my guitar and it sounded so good out of the box. I was confused. Why would it sound any different to GarageBand, there's no FX applied. It sounded so bright and clear and full.
Then I thought I should see if I can get a pure cleantone sound with no Guitar add-ons in GarageBand and the best I could figure out was Natural Vocal with all the Plugin's turned off. No EQ, no compressor. And it sounded so good!
I've never even tried removing all the stuff GarageBand adds on by default. Worth a try for anyone else out there that wants a nice clean sound, start from nothing and build from there.