A bit of advice.
When learning the cello, I got mixed advice on how to play loudly. Phyllis Young at UT told me to play as loudly as possible, so that you hear your mistakes; other teachers taught me to practice at the volume I intend to perform at. In that case, both my own judgment/experience -- and the stellar performing/careers of the others -- made me decide to practice at the volume I intend to perform at.
Something I've noticed on the guitar -- since my goal is to mostly be doing things at extreme amounts of gain -- is that I have to be FAR more accurate and deliberate with the gain/distortion cranked than I do playing clean/acoustic. And since I'm typically practicing with high gain, I've had to develop more accurate left-hand techniques and much better muting than I ever did when I was just playing acoustic. Not only that, but when I do switch to clean channel/acoustic sounds, it's much easier to play that way.
Also: Shut off all the effects, too, except for maybe a wee bit of reverb. Chorus is going to disguise when you're out of tune, gating is going to mask small errors you make, delay... fuckin' seriously? Yeah, you may record with all those things, but when you're practicing, you don't want effects to hide your mistakes.