[makikogi]

well your interface has a preamp. The preamp is the backbone of the tone. A good preamp will give you a nice strong, meaty and transparent tone, where a bad pre will yield a weak, anemic and muddy tone. It's different than just eqing also. You can eq the heck out of a crappy guitar, it'll only yield you a not as crappy tone, but eq a high end Taylor, martin, etc and you'll be rewarded with guitar bliss. So basically getting a good preamp has the same kind of principal as getting a good guitar (analogously that is)

So go buy yourself a brand new R Taylor guitar!!! or an Avalon or Manly pre!!

edit: haha sorry I should have finished reading the entire post. I haven't had that much experience with different types of preamps, but I have a presonus eureka (channel strip) that has a pretty clean pre. I like it, but if I were to do it over again, I would get a straight preamp, and not a channel strip (which includes eq and compression). I would get strictly a good preamp. I would say just stay away from the cheap stuff (presonus bluetube) Tube preamps are definitely worth the money, but they are pretty expensive. I wish I could give you some recommendations, but I must admit I don't have that much experience to give you solid advice. What kind of pre do you have on your interface? Start form there, cause sometimes a little thing like the ART tube MP can help out simply because of the increase in headroom.