Some real truth there, my friend.
As a follow-up: I took the Katana to a jam over the weekend and it was very eye opening, as this is the first time I have actually attempted to play a modeling amp at gigging/jam volume. First, and perhaps most surprising, is it's power section reacted very much like a tube amp to volume settings and honestly got better and better sounding (up until it was so loud that it was unusable - I just had to dime the thing once to find out!). Backed off to normal jam/small gig volumes you'd be hard pressed to hear a difference in the way the power amp reacted to the guitar volume versus a tube amp. That was shocking to me.
Now, I have to eat some crow and say that I was very wrong about the nature of the "crunch" and "lead" models. They are very good and very usable at volume (I still think they both sound pretty lifeless at low volume so for practicing I will stick with the "brown" model). The crunch is modeled on a Marshall JMP if I had to guess (they don't tell you), and with the gain about half way up and the Blues Driver engaged with just a touch of dirt in front it was very, very convincing. I spent most of the 3-1/2 hour jam on this setting and got more than a few comments about the quality of the tone (I am sure the WGS speaker had some small hand in this). I was playing my Les Paul Traditional, for reference, but I tried the same settings at home later with my ASAT and got similarly excellent results.
Now, let me be clear that while the quality of tones are extremely good it was not as rich and detailed a sound as a high quality tube amp. But...that all goes out the window when the rest of the guys kick in, and for what it is I am very pleasantly surprised with the amp. It's a great grab-and-go box and is starting to change my mind about modelers to some extent. This is the third modeling amp I have owned but the first that sounded like an actual guitar amp and now I think I am liking the fact that I have another option.
