Wow, this thread took a turn. My intent was just to share that having been around the block with all the major modellers-I chose the 11R. That was it. Since I have owned a bunch-and gigged most-here are my thoughts on each.

Pod X,Y,Z-I had the floor pod, HD147 and even an HD500. Try as I might-and I tried mightily, just couldnt get anything I liked out of them. I would think I did, then get to practice and turn up-and spend practice adjusting and never getting there.

GSP1101-great unit, though very dated now-still a great finisher product. Stick this in 4cm with any head and you have a complete solution. Gigged a few times like that with a blackstar combo.

AXE Ultra-hours of frustration. Relied heavily on others presets and still never quite got where I wanted to be. Gigged a few times, finally got tired of it and sold it.

11R(round 1)-loved the look, loved the tones. Hated dealing with protools. Hard time installing protools(cd errors), hard time with support. Hard time selling it because of license issues. Gigged a few times, loved the tones, but felt stuck.

Kemper-Super easy to use. Needs a foot controller(out yet?) Compared to fractal, takes forever for things to come out. Only way to load rigs was usb stick and reboot, though I think they fixed that reboot as I was bailing on it. Gigged once. Upside-a ton of rigs, downside-many werent good and organization is a nightmare.

Axe2-much improved version. Easy to get good tones. I blew mine up. Happens when you reach around and stick the RJ45 connector into the USB port, or was it the other way around. Anyway, had to send it back. They turned it around quick and for a fair price. I don't know what you CAN't do with this thing. Used it for synth stuff as well as guitar tones. Mainly just a few guitar tones. Synth was a little lame because you can only hit 1 note at a time. Farts out otherwise. Going to sell mine.

GR-55-This took all the weird needs out of the Axe. It does all of it better-way better. Multi notes, multi-instruments. Piano on one string, cello on the next, whatever. Acoustic tones kick butt. Unchained me from the Axe.

11R-round 2. Had it two days, brought it to practice(last night), loved it. Pretty much stayed with a bogner, ac30 and JTM patch and had no issues. Threw the fxloop last and used that for a boost, but waiting on a cable and then I'll use the mixed thing, seems easy enough and reminds me of the GSP1101 cntrl button setup, only variable. I need to make a new stage snake(just wrap the cables I need, midi, 2 1/4TS, 1 1/4TRS) to make life easier at gigs. The guys at practice were actually commenting on good the rig sounded-they didnt notice it was different, I didnt point it out until we came to a seether tune I usually downtune -1 using an axe preset. I can do that with the GR55 but I didnt have time to build a pre for that. I prefer the GR55 version anyway, but it's amp tones just arent in the same ballpark. Okay for one song. Two really, I use the guitar tones heavily in Lonely Boy(need the whammy).

Hopefully that is enough rambling to get back on subject, though I'll say it again, they all rock and lots of blokes get great tones from all of them. They all beat the G100-212 I had in high school!