Went to the local guitar shop and tested out a bunch of practice amps yesterday, and ended up going for the Blackstar HT1R combo. It's under the christmas tree now.
Anyone else get utterly bewildered by modelling amps? I tried plugging into a bunch of small ss 10-20 w combos, but they had so many damn options and things to tweak, and it took far too long to get anywhere near a decent tone. I found with the Blackstar I could get a good enjoyable tone from lightly speckled cleans to hard driven fuzz in a few seconds and then get on with the playing.
Similarly I have a Zoom G9.2TT unit that I've had for a good few years now and it is so much effort to do anything with it that it just collects dust.
I am thinking of getting a breadboard, some jacks and a bunch of components and having a play at making a few simple boost and drive pedals to refine the setup.
I also stripped a broken Yamaha guitar a few days ago, and stole a Seymour Duncan Custom Custom from an old unused budget guitar I had as a kid.
Installed the Custom Custom in the bridge of an Epiphone SG 400 from '97 which oddly has an Epiphone branded Bigsby tremolo arm, and as an experiment threw in a Seymour Duncan JB SH4 in the neck position to see what happened. The JB in the neck I'm not sure on yet. Using just the neck position for most tones is stupid and boomy, but seriously distorted you can get some fun stoner rock sounds. I've been getting much better results, however, from engaging both pickups, and rolling the JB volume back on the guitar about half way. Excellent and strong.
Will probably change it out for something less stupid in a few months.