It's a modeler.
It is pretty sweet. I ditched most of my pedals a while back and have been using the HX Stomp for effects in front of the amp, plus a MIDI controller for everything. Does just about everything fairly well.
I almost always play through an amp, but I do have some patches setup...
Steve rests (or used to) his pinky on the pickguard to anchor his picking hand. The original prototype didn’t have a guard and he found he missed the extra height, so they added a clear one.
I always bring a handful of spare tubes to a gig, but there's not much chance of being able to diagnose any issues until I was between sets. I think you'd have to know your amp well enough to get a sense of what's wrong. If I had to narrow it down quickly (on a dark stage), I'd check to see if...
I have a 1x12 I use primarily for rehearsing. It really is great. Sounds big and the dispersion is excellent. (Though, I gig with a regular 2x12 with a plexi dispersion shield in front of it and it's also excellent, so there are other ways to solve that problem.)
Fair enough. Fwiw, this was my solution to that problem. My load box and interface are on a little shelf by my amps, and I have an old laptop that's always on, running Reaper. (Most of the time the screen is closed but it's still powered on.) If I want to play on the couch, I just need to run a...
Personally I'd go with a good IR loader on your computer, fed from any load box you like. Maximum flexibility.
I'm currently using one of the York IR packs with a stereo room capture (fed from a Suhr RL) and, honestly, it's the closest I've ever felt to playing with a cabinet in the room...
I've had the Captor and the Suhr, much preferred the Suhr. You can find the non IR version second hand. (Though it's a bit more than the Captor.)
I'm also a fan of keeping the components separate. So when you need an IR loader live, you don't have to drag the load box with you.