[gmr]

I had a Vox vt20+ which was a nice little modeling amp. It had a lot of different amp models from clean to really heavy distortion and a whole bunch of effects on board. It was overwhelming to use. The trouble with most modeling amps is the limitations of features and effects you can run simultaneously. If I were more of a rock guy I may have loved the amp but my playing is mostly clean or just a bit of grit with some compression and a little delay or reverb. Nothing overly complex. I play mostly acoustic so I wound up getting a little Yamaha THR 5a, which is an acoustic amp version of the THR 10 mentioned in a previous post. It has a clean electric setting which does a reasonable job of modeling a tube amp type response. It has a nice breakup and just enough grit when you turn up the gain and max your guitar's volume pots. You can easily find the right combination of gain and volume to be able to range from clean electric to a cool bluesy grit by rolling off your guitar's volume pots. It is just a small bedroom amp but it has very nice tone without much volume. Comes with a license for a version of Cubase recording software that I have yet to attempt to use. The electric versions offer vastly more electric amp modeling. I chose the acoustic so I could have a nice little acoustic amp for home use and still be able to get the electric tones that I find appealing for me. With the hundred dollar savings over the more purely electric versions, I could purchase a couple of Behringer effects pedals to add more tone shaping possibilities for my limited electric playing. Anyway, a strong second to the recommendation of the THR amps from Yamaha.