This paper presents a setup to pick up saxophone reed vibrations directly, in an attempt to monitor the saxophone signal without risky feedbackloops despite drastic dynamic manipulations. We prepared synthetic saxophone reeds with strain gauge sensors and proposed a circuit to connect the sensor reed to a line-level soundcard input. Furthermore, we discussed possible open-source software to emulate classic stompbox effects. Finally, we presented a Csound instrument design, that allows on-the-fly signal routing between multiple effects in an ongoing live performance.