Ooo, an opportunity to talk amps. Apologies in advance for the splurge:
I play through two amps:
1. Upstairs, my main amp - an Orange Rocker 15 Terror into a Jet City 1x15 cab with a bunch of pedals
2. Downstairs, a Roland Micro Cube GX with built-in effects
To record, I use the cab-sim direct out from the Jet City cab the Orange is plugged into, but that gets pushed through a cab simulator and re-eq'd in Cakewalk, too.
I've tried going direct and just using amp and cab simulators to record but, tbh, I've not looked at it very hard as wanted to try and get the sound of the Orange in there, as I love it.
In general, I'm not a fan of the digital amps. I've had a few, including the big Katana head but I really love the "real" feel of plugging into the Orange with an overdrive pushing it into crisp, chuggy goodness.
Having said that, the Cube is of course digital in the way that it has a few amp models in it but pretty great in a processed, slightly 80s way. I bought it to be a good "toy" amp, not a "proper" amp and it exceeded my expectations. Tiny and super portable when noodling downstairs as I power it with AA batteries and use an Xvive wireless thing so no cables anywhere. Really fun set-up.