Well, I ended up getting a Marshall AVT275 combo, and a PODxt. Let me tell you...they are both amazing. The Marshall is the loudest combo I've ever heard! And it is very versatile. The clean stays clean and can be dirtied up a bit with some extra gain. Overdrive 1 is excelent for blues to hard rock. Overdrive 2 is a gain monster! I only have the gain up to about 7 and it really shreads. The on board fx are fairly decent...good for adding that little extra something to your sound. Now for the PODxt. I thought the POD pro was just "the sh@t", until now. The xt blew my mind. The factory presets are very good. They almost don't need any tweeking, but I know once I get more comfortable with it, it's gonna be on. I was a little intimidated at first, with all the new features and buttons, but after playing with it, it's actually easier. I haven't tried the usb stuff yet, so I don't know how that's going to work out (I'll save that for another post). I'm off to play some more......................