That link doesn't work. I wanna hear.

My first amp was a Mesa Boogie SOB in 1983...At that time I was ridiculed by my peers for using that because it was a "Jazz Amp" only good for stuff like Santana...No way that it would ever keep up with a Marshall I was told...My own thoughts were that I needed an amp that could do a good clean and a good crunchy tone...I tried some Marshalls and never could get a good clean out of it so I went with the Mesa...The bottom line is that people are the same as they ever were...And it really does not matter what they say or think since most of them are just repeating what they have heard or read from other people since they are unable to think for themselves...I would not waste my time worrying about that stuff...It will not ever change...

That's so true.  Eddie could get a better "brown sound" out of a banjo running into "Twang Amber" than a lot of people could get out of their high end gear.

I play a lot of golf, and too many guys try to "buy" a good golf game, and it's funny how often that happens with guitar gear too.

Well, I don't know about the handwired, custom built thing.  Yes, you do them kind of regularly.  But what I see most often is the old standbys - Fender Twins, Vox AC30s, Marshall JCMs.  I also see my fair share of Mesa Boogies.  What you don't see very often if people using amps with built-in effects, and I would say it's probably for the reason you stated.  Nobody wants to have an amp die and lose their whole rig.  If your rig is built around a classic amp with a pedalboard, you could always rent or borrow an amp if you had to.

The thing is though that the vast majority of guitar players will never go on tour. They will be lucky if they get a regular gig at a local bar.  So in that context, Line 6 amps may make a bit more sense.  They give the average player a wide variety of tone for not a lot of money.

In some ways, guitar players all suffer from delusions of grandeur.  We all want to build rigs with the intention of becoming the next Van Halen or Edge, but most of the time these rigs sit in our spare room.  Of course, I'm being a little sarcastic, as I know there are some working musicians here, but I just think that most of the people who buy Line 6 gear won't be throwing into the back of a tour bus very soon.

Let's face it, we buy Line 6 because they are cheap and they serve the purpose for us weekend rock stars. But, I recently fried one of the power amps on my AX2 212 and a Vetta head I just bought, from my own stupidity of course. I took the Vetta back to Guitar Center and got my money so nothing lost there. However, I had some sweet sounds dialed in on the AX2 212 and can't seem to get close to them on the HD147 I just bought but I'm sure in time I will be able to. I got tired of lugging the combo around all the time. I thought about cutting the bottom off and making a head out of it and a seperate speaker cabinet and still may do that. I usually used a B-52 cab and one speaker from the combo to get more mids and highs. The B-52 cab does not work well with the HD147 for me, too much low end. The past month has been a nightmare for me trying to duplicate the sounds I had, first on a GNX3000 I had to use for a gig, which really sucked and now on the HD147 but much easier. So that being said, I can see why people do not like Line 6 for this reason. I'm starting to lean more towards a tube head with no effects and building a pedal board. It seems to me it might be much easier in the long run.

True, not a big deal playing at a local bar. It would bother me though because I am the only guitarist and the whole band would basically have to stop and I would never hear the end of it. If I were playing in front of 100,000 people, I'm sure I would be able to get any type of rig I wanted and probably get it for free unless it was a one time deal or something and in that case I would rent something.. Line 6 is cool because you are always tweaking your sounds and finding new ones, keeps you from using the same sounds over and over and you are not limited to what you can do or having to buy more pedals.

I still like the tube idea with a pedal board though, maybe I'll just keep both.