many modelers could be considered overwhelming.
They are. And pretty much all of them - by now, even all those cheap things from the far east come with a truckload of at least pretty decent sounding amps and pedals.
Thing is also, my stupid little calculation didn't even include adding any FX but just the core sounds. It also didn't include balancing more than one sound so they'll work well together in, say, a live context. And most of all, it didn't include to touch a single control yet. While there might certainly be some sort of "set and forget" amps (with their ideal settings probably being loaded by default already), there's others offering such a broad palette of tones that it'd take hours and days to just explore those more or less thoroughly.
All these multiply the amount of options so much that even an entire human life dedicated to tone chasing wouldn't be sufficient to explore just a fraction of them (let alone trying them out in whatever actual musical contexts, even if it's just jamming over a backing track).
Imho, it's best to treat them like you'd have access to a huge stash of gear, or have found an abandoned store with all the gear left in the shelves.
While this would very likely describe a wet dream for most of us (myself included), I'm not sure whether it'd do us good. Could you resist the urge to try out as much of that stuff as possible?
Fwiw, while I didn't start this thread with any dedicated purposes in mind, I think one takeaway should be clear: While less isn't necessarily more, if we want to actually make music with all that stuff, at one point in time we will have to start limiting ourselves to less than what is available.
Add to this that almost sort unfortunately, these days money isn't much of an issue for anyone anymore (something like an HX Stomp is an affordable item for pretty much any person living in the western world), with modelers space and volume are no issues anymore, either, so there's pretty much no natural limits anymore.
Being a sort of an old fart, I remember the days when this was very, very different (in fact, it's barely 20 years ago). Back then, you simply were limited. In case you couldn't use your glorious pedalboard or rack and that cranked amp most of the time (but on rehearsals and gigs), you were happy when you found anything that'd sort of give you a kind of acceptable home practice tone. Or two. So once you had these two tones, the tone chasing ended and you just had to see what you could be doing with them.
And it didn't end at home. Us mere mortals usually didn't have the financial means to afford a big ass rack or whatever. Until not too long ago, the most common thing has been one (1!) amp with maybe 2 channels and a handful (or maybe 2 handfuls) of stomp boxes in front. Sure, all that changed with the first half-decent programmable units on the market (such as the GP-8), but those were usually just used by some outliers.
What I'm saying is that until not too long ago, if we wanted to get the most mileage out of our gear, we had to do this by exploring the limited options very thoroughly.
Back then: So, your amp for 500 bucks with your two 50 bucks pedals in front don't sound like a kitchen sink rack? Well, let's see what else this might be good for.
Today: <Laughs in 27 HX series delays> (all of which you could even use multiple times in one patch)
Long story made somewhat shorter: When I re-organized my pedalboard somewhen early last year, which included quite some reduction of tonal options (basically down to two pedalsized modelers always running the same patches, serving as a clean and dirt platform, plus a handful of dirt pedals), I found myself playing a whole lot more pretty much all of a sudden. My live sound improved, too, a big part of that improvement being familiarity with the sounds and their readily available shaping options.
And then the last HX update came along. Soundwise, it's a fantastic update, really. Some of the new amps IMO are just glorious.
So, what did I do? Right, exploring all these new amps, combining them with whatever how many stompboxes and cabs, etc. And I've been playing considerably less - even if some of the sounds I explored are worth being played all day long. But uh-oh, there's all these other goodies to explore, I possibly couldn't miss out on them, could I?
And that (plus another thread on Gearspace) has been pretty much the main reason for me to start this thread...
