I recently discovered, and became mildly obsessed with, Neural Amp Modeler or NAM. An open source project which lets anyone create and share profiles of guitar amplifiers. These model files can be used to very realistically simulate the amp digitally using a VST plugin.
And the results are amazing. I was jamming with a friend today and these models, running on a laptop then going through a 100W power amp and a cab with a Celestion V30, sound totally believable like vintage Marshalls, Mesa/Boogie or Freedman amps. It's so good I think I'll build my rig around it.
