My recordings are layered. I use the click and do find it awfully annoying. But I have a system now that works for me quite well. The material I do is acoustic country so when I do banjo, it can very easy to miss a beat at high speeds. So what I do now is to have the click on for track number one which is always a ghost track. On that track, I record a vocal and guitar, but the guitar only does the 4 beat downstrokes-no strum, and only the down beat. It serves as a "master track" and contains the correct beat, after which the original clicker is turned off. Then the initial layered track (bass or guit usually) plays to the ghost track. In a way it's really a substutute for a pure click track, but it's softer and more subtle. I have found you do play more like freeform when lining up with an instrument, even if it's just thump thump. It's subtle but you can really get into it more and the final product doesn't sound like a robot. For what it's worth....

Paul Ryan
www.ryantunes.com