Korg Toneworks AX5G... not bad. Weird, but not bad.

This probably belongs in the hardware forum but this is part of my ongoing adventure of trying out the various outboard stuff I've got lying around to see what kind of tools I have for effected input signals.
 
So someone gave me this thing a few years back as a gift. I guess they snagged it for essentially nothing at a flea market or something. They don't play guitar so they had no idea what it really was but figured it's a guitar thingie and it was cheap so hey... let's give it to ole Beeps.
 
To me it looked kind of weird and cheesy and I didn't really expect much out of it. I tried out some of the presets and there was a few alright sounding things but a lot of it was indeed weird and cheesy. I saw a bit of potential though because it has an expression pedal that screws around with not only wah stuff but various effect parameters so I shelfed it until I had the time to figure out how to program it (it did not come with a manual).
 
So over the past six months I've been slowly hooking up and testing out stuff in various configurations and because I'm wanting to do some leads on my current project which is kind of wacky I thought maybe I could toss some bizzarro stuff using the expression pedal on this thing. I found the manual online and much to my surprise it actually works kind of like a Rockman in the sense you can just hook up some headphones to it and go nuts. COOL! Neither of my amps has a headphone out so unless I plug into my mixer or through the DAW I generally just practice unplugged which obviously isn't all that gratifying.
 
I started going through the presets with my headphones plugged in and casually looking over the manual. A large portion of the presets are kind of bad and unusable but many of them had potential. In the manual I'm seeing there are various amp models and cab sims, lots of common effects, a bunch of reverbs and something that is really usful to me... an acoustic guit simulator. 
 
Again I didn't really expect much and just like anything else I've owned from Korg it's a totally freakshow to operate/program but hey... I had the thing out and I'm an obsessive dork so what the hey. Might as well see what it can do.
 
Well I just spent the past couple hours figuring out all the various settings and darned if the thing doesn't sound really freaking good with some meticulous tweaks. Most notable I could get my Pacifica actually sounding like a decent, realistic sounding acoustic using the acoustic sim and screwing around with the reverb a bit. Sounded even better going through one of the clean amps. This is particularly cool for me because I used to do tons of acoustic work and HATED screwing around with crappy house mics on stage and now that I'm all gimped out that's even more of a PITA to the point I just don't think it would even be possible anymore. With this I think I could just plug straight in to the PA (it is designed specifically to go line in to a mixer), set the level and have at 'er.
 
Beyond that the actual amp sims are pretty good and varied. I was ynking all sorts of usuable tones out of it for blues, rock, thrash, whatever. There's a bunch of weird stuff too like an octaver (which sounds like old Prince stuff which I use to LOVE), neato flanges and choruses and even a drone thing (that actually kind of sucks but I only fiddled with it briefly).
 
Anyway... no real point but I thought it was cool. Something that was free and essentially collecting dust is looking like it might be super useful and until I get a MIDI pedal board I think that expression pedal is going to come in handy.
 
They also seem to sell for peanuts (like $30 or so by some accounts on the web) so thought maybe it'd be a cool cheap toy for the more adventurous folks to look out for.
 
It is however a bit of a pain to program but once you figure it out it's reasonably straight forward. Also in a live situation I personally would not use it aside from a set it and forget deal or maybe bouncing around a couple patches prgrammed close together. As an old school stomp box for on/off action I think it would be a pain and would not have survived very long in my old gigging environments. In the studio though, jamming out with headphones or as a DI into a PA I think it's pretty cool.
 
Just thought I'd share and if anyway has one of these maybe they have some thoughts or tips on it.
 
Cheers.