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?
ToneX and Neural Amp Modeler are both in a completely different category from everything else. They’re using a new form of amp modeling that sounds vastly better than the impulse-based modelers of the past. Everyone will switch to this at some point, but those are the only two who have switched to neural network based modeling so far.
NAM is free, but only available as a plug-in. ToneX is available as a plug-in and as an affordable box you can gig with. The only downside is that it only covers the amp and cab, so you’re still going to need your pedalboard for other effects. There’s also no effects loop, but I think it’s fine to apply your post effects after the cab has been applied.
The other downside is that it’s just a box, so you’re going to need speakers for gigging. You may need to plug into a PA or something like that for gigs.