I think most people do it the wrong way, 12inch speaker will not be usable at lower home levels, burning money, even 11rack or Axe Fx are too expensive. (they are overpriced software dongles)
Analogue:
Get a fender (pre 80ties princeton/tweed) (or copy) an old used engl 620 preamp or Carl Martin Plexitone Pedal, there you go, you have the best clean sounds (possible) and touch sensitivity to record, killing every shitty mesa/modern multi channel crap amp and a open! distortion sound at very low volume with quite a cool feeling, not this annoying nasally Mesa 80ties santana/dream theater/Carlton mess (if you like these 3 cheesy sounds simply turn the treble blend on your Guitar down.
Digital:
Get Amplitube Slash silver marshall amp, perhaps some Redwirez Impulse speakers, the rodenberg 728 an A Designs Reddi or cheaper Radial DI, RME AIO, Reaper and record and play with almost no latency. If you are into nasally Dokken (Under Lock and Key) the Steeler Amp inside Scuffham could be appropriate, it has that vibe.
If you buy used absolutely (analogue items) no!!! value degradation, two no hype and smart solutions.
(Read your guitar heroes, my recommendation could be a tiny bit gain underpowered, not much...a bit, you have to play better/cleaner/stronger to compensate this ;-))
To cut down (digital way) costs, use only RME Babyface and omit Rodenberg=> A Design Reddi or Radial or use M-Audio PCI with DI, to get a similar latency (around 3-4ms) equal to 11rack or Axe FX
There is so much blah about improving latency, it has nothing! to do with a brand new system/mac, fast processor, 64 bit, ram, blah blah, it only depends on the the sound interface, I measured it. You can use 8 year old pc computer hardware with xp =>absolutely no! latency difference to the fastest system around today.
Kai
Sounds great.
