First of all - Hi Reddfugees! (Did I coin a term?)
I was about to post this to /r/guitar and /r/guitareffects but screw Reddit for now.
Anyway - I have a couple Boss Katana Mk 1's. They are fun, and "workable" but never have really sounded that great. Sure they are so much better than my old solid state Peavy from 1990, but they just aren't great.
So I have been thinking of diving into the amp modeler/multi effects world (i.e. Fractal, Line6, Zoom, etc etc) and when I started looking around noticed that there are a TON of these other smaller brands out there. Mooer, NUX, Hotone (Ampero), Valeton, Donner, Headrush, etc etc etc.
I've about gone blind and deaf from watching youtube comparison videos of these.
My budget was roughly $300-350 or less. Maybe I will sell a guitar and a Katana and could stretch that a bit. But when I started looking - I don't think I even need to. $300ish gets you a LOT these days.
What I want:
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Giggable platform, i.e. not totally studio based, easy to swap presets/scenes, ideally possible to toggle individual effects (maybe not needed depending on how scene stuff goes). Small gigs, bars, that kind of thing. Modeler + powered FRFR speaker, + FOH sometimes. This will be used in my home studio 90% of the time, but I want something I can set up, practice on, and unplug to gig with minimal tweaking.
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Good amp models out of the box. Rock, Grunge, Blues, Acoustic. Rather have 20 decent amp/cab models than 250 that are never going to be used.
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Good effects for Fuzz/Dist, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, Compressor. Bonus if there is a GOOD wah, extra bonus for a good Whammy style pitch shifter.
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Effects loop (maybe not 100% needed if above has everything)
Ideally runs on 9V but not a big deal if not. Good/usable software for the initial setup/tweaking. User community with shared presets etc. is nice.
Specifically looking at: Hotone Ampero MP100 Valeton GP200 NUX MG30 Mooer GE200
Anyone want to discuss?
Are you willing to buy used? If you can stretch to about $500 the HX Stomp is available to you. It pretty much has everything you are looking for, except I'm not as familiar with the whammy/ wah models as I don't use those, and it won't run on 9V. It has a really nice software package with a community hub of presets. Line 6 also keeps publishing updates to it. The interface is simple to build and tweak patches. The only issue I have with it is sometimes I get analysis paralysis and there are just too many things to tweak.
That was was on the list too (off the top $ side). Or maybe it was the POD Go. Either way - I watched a youtube with that as one of the reviewed models that was compared to 2 or 3 of the others I listed, and it was amazing how well the cheaper ones did! But the Line 6 was really good out of the box, the presets were very solid, and I thought the control system was very gig friendly (especially the colored buttons).
Line 6 has certainly been in the game a long time, and I know there is a great community there. I've never owned a modeling anything other than the two Katana's and those just don't do it for me anymore. Amplitube 5 into my studio monitors sounds amazing, but that seems like a PITA to play live with.
A few of these modelers (I think the Line 6, and the Mooer, and one of the others, seemed to have REALLY good stock presets. Like minor tweaks out of the box and could be off to play. Although tweakability and stuff is fun, I have to make a real effort to not go down that rabbit hole all the time. The other night I was going to practice 8 songs for an upcoming show, most of which are newish to me, and I instead after the first song I spent 2 hours messing with my tone in Amplitube. And I don't even use that live! It can be a real problem. That's actually when I decided I need to look at these sim/FX units, find one that has a handful of GOOD tones out of the box (or close) and ideally has gig friendly controls (for patch/scene changes, live sets, etc) and just make that my main rig for 90% of the time. Get my 4-6 sounds/patches set up and be done.
Amazon has good return policies, maybe its time to make a best guess and buy a couple and return what I don't want.