The clips I've heard so far do sound better than their last generation (especially the /13 and other breakup clips) and I suspect the HD500 is pretty good to play in person. That's a cool vid, though I'm with Judge there in that I find it hard to assess tone with that level of gain and that kind of playing (though I do prefer the Axe FX versions in that particular clip).

I just sold my X3 Live with the intention of picking up either the HD500 or 11r. The X3L I had gave some pretty good recorded sounds but wasn't quite there on the touch response / feel side..at least not enough to make it my main playing "amp". If they've made even a fairly modest improvement to it though, that might be enough for to sell me on the new one (I'm hoping to do a side by side comparrison to the 11 in the store).