Still using a Presonus Eureka preamp for vox and acoustic guitars. I had got right away from hardware with guitars for the last year or so, but I've come back to my trusty Deluxe Valve and bought a new Mustang floor pedal to drive it, mic'd cab only with no dry second track, purely to get some 'dirt' back into my projects. Now three songs into my next album and the difference is pretty vast compared to my last lot of work. So, I guess for me, I'm just not getting the results out of the guitar sims. Plus, the time, for me, is much, much (read much) less. I get my sound, press record, and that's it. No second, third, or 13th retry at getting 'the sound' later out of the box of bytes. I also use my electric piano, but not for any real reason. Now, if I had the room for an ol' grand and a real kit !!!

Hi. Due to lack of space, I do not have any guitar amps anymore But I have a POD HD500 that I use, and I like it. It is quite versatile. But after seeing the videos of TH3, I might have to try it out. As for other HW, I have two channel strips with compressor, that I usually play my bass and record vocals through. I have couple of compressor besides them, but they get less and less used. I am thinking about selling them.
So in my case I will probably get more mics and preamps (where I am located now), but I cannot afford the HW I would love to have that I already do have available as plugins (some reverbs, compressors, EQs etc).
Just a little rant and my 0,002€
All the best.

Well,
 
Almost all my projects starts out using my Roland Fantom X. Since Its powered on 24/7 Its just a matter of hit REC and go for it ;)
A guitar and a V-Synth is also routet to be captured by the Fantom.
 
Its a great setup for getting any idea down fast. Transfering that idea to the SPlat is a bit of a hassel but not that bad.
 
I have tryed the all in the box approach but found that I just got tangled up in sound details rather than getting a song down.
 
 

BenMMusTech
My advice is if you prefer analogue, then use analogue all the way, of course still using the digital interface and software, but remember to get that analogue sound it's going to have to be got from the hardware...you probably also need some sort of summing mixer to really beef up the signal either in the mix or master process.  But if you can work out the digital emulator paradigm, which is more flexible...you probably wont shift back and your bank balance will thank you.  

I use quite a lot of hardware. Analogue synths, real guitars into real amplifiers etc. I use plugins as processors and effects a lot, but almost all the sound starts in hardware. I have used software synths and by and large, with exceptions, I find analogue filters beat digital in the same way that pedals and amps beat "emulators".

A hardware sequencer can allow you to create and track a music performance on the fly with a result that would take hours of detailed MIDI work to do in a computer.

Sure, hardware can be expensive. But there's quite a boom in analogue and digital hardware synths these days, the availability of cheap decent sounding synths encourages people to try them and some of us conclude that plugins simply don't compare. If you're the kind of person who endlessly browses presets and loops hoping to find a usable sound I can see why plugins appeal. Ditto on financial grounds and I've been there myself. One area where I do use software is wave-table synthesis, another is sampling. In both cases hardware equivalents are just stand-alone computers anyway.

Fashions change over time. Back in the early 1980s you could pick up a now very collectible Marshall Lead or Super Lead head for very little money (as I did). Because, it was said, valves were "old fashioned", "unreliable" and modern transistor circuits can do everything a valve can and do it better, or somthe sales pitch went. So lots of guitarists sold their valve gear and bought solid-state amps. Something very many later came to regret.

As for recording levels etc. if you know how to do the most basic mixing then it's a no-brainer really. Just track at a suitable level to keep clear of convertor clipping.

Not sure if they are still considered hardware, but for guitar I use the boss gt001 and Line 6's hd500.  Its a happy mid point for me.  I tried TH2 and TH3 but couldn't run my sound card lower than 7ms round trip latency.  With the external effects I use direct monitoring.  I'm not sure why 7ms would make a difference??  That is what the sound card is set at, maybe its not the actual latency.  If I go under 7ms I start to notice drops.  I will definitely use TH3 for effects and re-amping.  Just my 2 cents.

Still using the Roland Integra-7.  I only produce composer demos, so working with software synths to get the perfect sound would be distracting.
 

kzmaier
Not sure if they are still considered hardware, but for guitar I use the boss gt001 and Line 6's hd500.  Its a happy mid point for me.  I tried TH2 and TH3 but couldn't run my sound card lower than 7ms round trip latency.  With the external effects I use direct monitoring.  I'm not sure why 7ms would make a difference??  That is what the sound card is set at, maybe its not the actual latency.  If I go under 7ms I start to notice drops.  I will definitely use TH3 for effects and re-amping.  Just my 2 cents.

Whether the 7ms is accurate or not depends on a couple of things. The first is whether the driver correctly reports to the DAW. The second is that a lot of interfaces have a "safety buffer" on top of the driver's buffer and many don't report this back to the DAW at all. The only way to be sure is to loop an interface output to an input, send a ping round the loop and see how long it takes to get back to the DAW. The easiest way is to create an audio track and put a sample with a clearly defined beginning on it. Then create a second track, armed for recording, linked to the interface input with a cable between input and output. Then hit record and see what the time interval is between the original sample and the recorded sample in the second track.

I guess you can call a real drum kit hardware!  
I guess by hardware you are taking outboard synths vs soft synths as well as outboard effect boxes vs plug in effects. 
 
I use it all. My hardware is all still working so I will still use it when possible.
 
 I'm so used to what my hardware does so often can get a sound I want quicker.  The software is a bottomless pit that takes away all my free time I could have been making music. So call me lazy but I use hardware when it get the job done when there is probably better software synth or effect hidden away somewhere too. Once I discover a new soft synth I like I swicth over to that. I have forsaken my Lexicon reverb and Roland delay unit and now just use the ITB versions. But it took a few years for me to be comfortable with them. 
 
For guitars I'm still outside the box for sure. 

I have a Roland MIDI sound module that's a couple of decades old that I still use.  To my ears, certain instruments like the piano just sound better than anything that I get out of virtual instruments but I realize that's probably just because I'm used to it.  The ability to do zero latency monitoring with it helps a bit since it makes playing through a MIDI keyboard feel a bit more natural.  Convenience and tweakability have been winning out lately as I find myself using Addictive Keys more and more often.  
 
I have a TC G-Force hooked up for certain effects.  Again, to my ears, the delays, chorus, etc. sound better than what I can get from plug-ins.  Also probably partly because I'm used to it but I think there's some TC mojo going on since, after all, those sort of things are what they are known for.  Also, I really haven't found any plug-ins that are as versatile in terms of routing without doing something awkward with aux tracks/buses.  
 
My favorite piece of "hardware" is my Mesa head & cabinet.  Nowadays, I find I do a significant amount of work through amp simulators just because they are so much more practical but I do still record with the Mesa a decent amount of time.  I've been experimenting with a re-amper recently to try to get the best of both worlds.  
 

I just use preamps: Symetrix 528E Voice Processor for mics and Trakhmann Tube Colour for guitars.