Following the death of my Sansamp PSA-1 (
http://forum.cakewalk.com...Sansamp-m3349993.aspx) which is now either being nursed back to health or stripped for salvage by Karyn, my rack had a guitar preamp shaped hole in it that I needed to fill (hopefully for somewhat less than £600!)
Enter the Digitech GSP1101. Whilst I've only really scratched the surface thus far (mostly checking out and tweaking the presets), I must say I'm really impressed. The OD/Distortion is much better than I expected, the effects are good, the effects loop routing is flexible (you can switch in either an external preamp, or external effects), the interface is easy to use (plus has a PC based editor/librarian accessible over USB) and it has a decent bunch of I/O options.
In thinking about what to compare it to...I do not have experience of e.g. the Kemper Profiling amp or the AXE-FX (which I would say are both much higher-end/'pro' devices, at least if their price tag is to be believed), but perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be against the Line 6 products (the HD or even the newer Helix series). In my honest opinion, the GSP just smashes the POD HD (the HD500X still holds the joint record for 'most rapidly returned electronic musical device', alongside the Roland GR55).
For £250, I think the GSP is a bargain and there's nothing else I'm aware of for a similar price that comes close. I also got a Rocktron Xpression (£99 2nd hand, a price which easily trumped the non-2nd hand TC G-Major 2 which I was also looking at) to run in parallel with the GSP and together they sound amazing.