Okay, so I've used ALL THREE major kinds of amplification/tone since middle school in the mid 1990's: Cheap Transistor Amps, Expensive TUbe Amps, and Amp Modelling (and even just digital effects through a good amplifier). I still use all three, because variation is fun, and honestly, all three CAN have good tone with some effort.

Going back to what I've said before in the past, 99.9% of us guitarists are acting like a 4 year old fearing the boogeyman of "bad tone" under our beds because we don't quite understand these newfangled creatures. I for one, am in the minority - a technical guitarist, with some electronics skills, a good ear (IMHO), and an understanding of Science. Honestly though, the fear, anxiety, and stress we put upon ourselves regarding our tone is not exactly for the non-guitar playing Audience - that makes up the majority of people coming to see you play live and buying your recordings - but rather, focusing on impressing the other guitarists to keep the expensive rig Clad post-high-school bullies away. It's really like going to middle school in the 90's when everyone was wearing Starter Jackets and Fila and Air Jordan shoes - that's all anyone cares about, what it LOOKS like. IDGAF if an amplifier is transistor, tube, or runs on nuclear power - if it sounds good, I'm going to use it.

The truth is, most non-professional, and semi-professional local guitarists, don't understand any of this computer stuff. They see something like a Line6 Helix or a BOSS ME-whatever and get totally confused becauase it's not a military style metal box with 3 knobs and a footswitch on it. That's why BOSS made a unit like the GT-55 - because it looks like an Analog pedal, and guitarists used to literally gleam over that one when it came out because it did not look like a NASA control panel with an LCD, buttons, and Encoders on it.

And as a result, they don't understand anything they can PHYSICALLY see about the digital effects device! They don't understand the flow of the signal, what "pedals" come first or last, before or after the amp model, and they don't understand half the names of the built-in amps because "Copyright Issues". like instead of Marshall 50watt, Hiwatt Custom, and Dumble - you get Courtwall 50 Watt, 50 Watt Custom, and Bumble Booteek! And of course, we don't sit and read the manual, unless we're bored and taking a shit, so we have not a fucking clue WHAT amplifier we are using.

And without that understanding of the signal chain, or even what element of a specific amp modeler is being modeled, they don't understand how to PROGRAM the damned thing to sound good. Guitarists typically don't think of their amp or pedal knobs in terms of "0-255", we think in terms mostly of 2 o' clock or 11 o' clock like hands on a clock....unless you're me and understand 16-bit math (somewhat).

To make it worse, our impulsivity takes over when we start to see we have an entire Guitar Center worth of effects, amps, and even modeled gutiar pickups to pick from. So some of us impulsivley start to add on everything but the kitchen sink, especially younger guys. I know, I was one. Here comes Digital Dan the FX man throwing compressor, distortion, EQ, Delay, reverb, chorus, flanger, pitch shifter, and everything else on top to make some swirling mess barely recognizable as a guitar, and then throws so much noise gate over the end of it to quiet the enusing mess down, he loses any ability to use his Volume, or even TONE control to change the sound at all other than the digital cacauphony that ensues. And so then the traditionalists and frustrated guys who understand the equipment get pissed off and tell him to get a good amplifier with decent distortion - and better yet TUBES - to take over teh job.

But me - the difference is, I understand SOUND. And there are a lot of us out there, you just don't notice us until you realize were not playing your usual fender/Marshall/Blackstar amp and a row of little stompboxes slamming the front end in apropriate order - but rather, a single board emulating everything through the Front of House!

Granted, the OLDER devices did Suck. I remember the BOSS ME-6 had terrible distortion, the Korg AX30G was the first GOOD unit I ever used and even that had some eccentricities like balancing the input and output of the pedal via 2 analog pots. The ME-33 sucked a little less than the ME-6, the Digitech stuff was nice but hard to get enough midrange out of, the Behringer V-Amp Pro was a little more 2D but now we were getting somewhere, and then the GNX-1 sounded even better but the Reverb was lacking for my needs...then another Digitech was a bit better, then I got into the Line6 HD500 used and that's been almost a full replacement for my Bugera + Stompbox setup I've been using since 2008 - especially at home.

The first cardinal sin guitarists make with this is not understanding where the guitar sits in a mix. Amp MOdeling allows you a lot more control over the amplifier's overall sound than the regular amp. On my Line6 device - which is now about 8 years old, I can control almost everything about an amplifier models personality: the tubes, the class, the sag, the "thump", the bias, the cabinet, the spearkers, where the microphone is placed and what microphone is PUT on those speakers. This is going to mess you up even with a Dumble and a row of Analog pedals in Real life. Truth is, most guitarists I've known, never had to mic their own stuff (or compensate for an idiot soundman by turning their amplifier way up because he hated the player's amp and refused to mic it in a turn of brand-based hatred). I'm apparetly, a rare exception, I've even had the soundman hand ME the microphone and choose the best speaker - and I did!

The second problem I see is most guitarists don't really understand their rigs that well to begin with. Since the 1990's, we've been inundated with guitar heroes that just slam the front end of a high headroom amplifier with a few analog pedals from the early 80's or older, sometimes in an order that sounds cool, but does not sound right. So a lot of guys my age don't understand - or even know - about "dummy load setups" or why a chorus or flanger sounds better AFTER the head rather than before it (or how to even do that).

They think they do though, often based on verbatim recitals of things told to them by "professional guitarists" from magazines and the internet who - some don't even know what they are doing or why either. THis leads to a traditionalist mentality that things MUST sound a certain way for a certain purpose, and refusal to try anything different or new, which is what legend-hood is totally based on. Did Edward Van-Halen or Jimi Hendrix become highly influental by doing the same things all their peers were doing at the time? Hell no! While everyone else was playign clean through giant stacks, Jimi was embracing every technical advancement of the 1950's-1970's on guitar. Without him, we might still be playing clean guitar with a vibrato for light "warbles". Edward Van-Halen doing crazy stuff like plugging his Marshall into a light dimmer (and almost burning down his house) and wax potting pickups with Sex Wax ina Yuban Coffee Can on a hot plate lead to some serious stuff that we can't live without today.

Same thing applies to modeling. Yes, I know, you're not moving air behidn you, I miss that too, but honestly, people have become so soft