Anyone else seeing stuff like this or can relate to it?
Very defenitely. "Option paralysis and how to deal with it (or not)".
Add to this the brutal amount of, say, YT gear demo channels where there's most excellent players blasting away with "perfect" sounds.
Results in what you described as well: "I rather not trust my own ears".
And then there's also:
But when I have a DD3, DD8, RV5, and MXR Reverb... right there on the floor in front of me... alongside the actual Mark V footswitch unit... there's just no fucking about, nothing goes wrong, and I get speed, I get reliability, and I get ease of use.
This!
When even someone as you is sort of "struggling" with some aspects of modeling (or rather the way multi-FX units work), how would this work out any better for a beginner?
And to this very day, there's no single modeler allowing you to work that way, at least not by default. Not even remotely even. Just to note some of the things lacking (I know, I'm partially repeating myself, but hey...):
- Lack of WYSIWYG. Results in menu diving, parameter jumps, need to resave things and what not. JFTR: Some of that could be adressed in case more companies would do it the Zoom MS/G-unit way. The most relevant parameters of any given effect are exposed instantly, there's readouts and endless pots. In addition, there's an autosave feature (that you need to be careful with in order not to destroy precious patches, but for the most part I love it). Really, this is possibly getting the closest to an analog interface.
- Related but still worth mentioning: Lack of exposed parameters. Taking your example, the Boss and MXR pedals are exposing 15 parameters already. There's not a single actual unit exposing these many parameters (the Boss ME-90 doesn't qualify as you can't have, say, multiple delays mapped to the physical knobs). And there's no even remotely easy, affordable and reliable ways to add that to whatever modeling/FX hardware.
I'd add to this that there's no option to deal with a modeler as you would deal with a loopswitcher based setup. Yeah, you can control the on/off status of whatever blocks but you might even be running out of switches quickly. For instance, in my last setup I had 6 drives placed in my dirt loop. I would preselect (and combine) them to suit the situation. On a modeling unit, that'd require 6 switches already, plus another one to possibly engage the split path. Similar things go for how I'm still using my MS-50. I either have a patch in which its loop is activated or a switch to do so - but either way, I can preselect an MS-50 patch beforehand. Which is excellent. For gigs, I usually have 2-3 patches that I cycle through, ready to roll whenever I feel like. Again impossible with modelers (I know there's channels on the FAS blocks, but they're still a pretty different thing).
In the end, option paralysis, uncertainty and lack of easy access create quite a dilemma, especially for those not familiar with many things.
When all you have is a single amp (maybe featuring 2-3 channels), a bunch of pedals and a single cab, you just don't have any options to quickly use another amp, another bunch of pedals and another cab (having said that: there's enough hoarders with analog option paralysis to be sure...).
As a result, you just use what you have.
Which also kills a lot of the uncertainty. There's simply no Sadites-post-compressing-tricks you could apply. Let alone a bunch of parallel cabs all mic'ed up 2 times.
It also pretty much *forces* you to get the most out of what you have.
And finally, it's easy to do because, well, things are exposed, ready to be grabbed and adjusted.