I have been playing semi professionally for about forty years. My first gig I was at 12 and so I figure I have seen a lot of hardware pass my eyes and have played many of them. I use music shops to test, use recording studios to prove and use by brains on how much you spend relative to what you earn as a musician or for the love of it. The one thing I learnt was to always make a decision based on your needs. If you are in a covers band and need to simulate lots of sounds i.e Cars to Elton to Beachboys to Greenday then probably a convenient Line 6 XT Pod is good for you if you can affort it and make use of it. Realize 7 out of 10 players on stage cannot hear the real difference between a few good pedals and a multi-effects even by classification of analogue versus digital. Now here is the trick question? How many sounds do you really want to develop as yours. Usually great players have between four to eight sounds. In that case about four or five great analogue pedals ie. wah, compressor/expander, OD or distortion to delay, chorus, phaser/flanger maybe to volume pedal end of line may be your option. Either way get all of them second hand out of E Bay so it doesn't hurt so much if you picked the wrong pedal