Couple of suggestions...first up, you might have a look at Adventure Audio's Merge. This is a module specifically designed for working with guitar, etc signals. It's got a send/return path for external FX, plus a proper instrument preamp that feeds into an envelope follower. And that last bit there is how you can use the guitar's amplitude curves to control pretty much anything that you'd feed that signal to...filters, VCAs, all sorts of possibilities. Right now, this is what the Ears is for, but the Merge offers way more flexibility and modulation potential.
Second: you can tighten up the tile row by removing the buffered mult (you really don't need it, as you don't have enough pitch CV destinations to cause voltage sag) and then adding that regained space with the gaps, and maybe by removing the USB jack tile. That would give you 20 more hp in the tile row. And you could even strip out the headphone preamp tile by going with a performance mixer that has a headphone output. Plus, you can get these with some very useful functions, such as Toppobrillo's Stereomix2, which has CV over level (and these would serve as your final audio level VCAs), panning, and each strip's AUX level. It has a mono AUX send with a stereo return, which is perfect for "global" effects such as reverb, etc. Oh, and clickless mutes, plus a CUE function associated with them that'll let you audition a channel separately via the headphones, which can be invaluable if you have a tuning mishap live. That's a far better solution, IMHO!