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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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?