Help Me Narrow My Search

Hi all-I’m dipping into this forum to crowd source some recommendations. Kindly bear with me, I’m gonna provide a bit of detail and background, and note that I haven’t really thought about amps in over a decade. There is also a TLDR at the end.

For context:

My main goal right now is downsizing and maintaining great tone and flexibility. I’m in the US. I play lots of styles personally, but my gigging band plays hard rock—essentially 90s style alt rock. I’m the lead guitarist.

This is about gigging and practice. My gear lives at my practice space and I just use a Neural plugin at home for practice. Recording isn’t an issue either —I have access to anything I’d everI want at the studio we record at, and I typically record with a Marshall Super Lead.

Background and Use Case:

I haven’t thought about amps in forever because 15 years ago, in my early 20s at the height of my band guy days, I got close enough to my ideal setup with a used TSL 100 that I kitted out with NOS from Eurotubes (although the DSL was my true love), and a Marshall 4x12.

After not playing for many years, I sold my Marshall cab (never really loved the speakers anyway), and about five years ago I picked up an Orange 2x12 with Greenbacks in it.

During my hiatus I also sold all my pedals, but since I’ve been playing again I picked up a Boss GX-100, which I’ve used as a multi effects pedal (no modeling or cab sim).

So my current setup is running the TSL with VPR on @ 30 watts, putting GX-100 through effects loop using the 4 cable method, and using tube drive channels on my amp. So I’ll have my 5-button Marshall foot switch and my GX100 on the floor. I love this setup because it’s extremely versatile tonally with the three independent channels on the TSL, plus the FX Loop on/off on the foot switch lets me stage effects before engaging them (I’ve never been great at pedal gymnastics). This setup gives me a ton of flexibility and it sounds killer across the board.

But it’s a relatively complex setup and there’s a lot of stuff to lug around. Moreover, we’re a small band mostly playing small venues (like 150 cap), so I don’t always have the opportunity to use my rig at shows.

Occasionally, like a couple times a year, we’ll open for a bigger band at a 500 cap venue—but it’s looking like we’ll have more and more opportunities to do these kinds of shows. These are more professional gigs and I’ve always been able to use and soundcheck my own gear. 99% of the time our amps are miced live—occasionally we will play a DIY without house sound. It’s a total pain when I can’t use my own stuff because of how specific my setup is. I have an alternative patch for just running the GX into the front of the amp and using its onboard distortion effects, but it’s never really the tone I want—it’s always a compromise.

TLDR:

Although I like my setup, it’s complicated, heavy, I can’t always use it at gigs, and ultimately, I really have way more amp than I actually need in any context.

So I’ve been thinking about ways to down size to a combo. I think I can do this one of two ways; either :

(a) get 1 or 2x12 combo with both drive and cleans that I love and an fx loop so I can just emulate my current setup at a smaller scale but almost certainly with 2 channels rather than 3 (which I’m totally fine with tbh)—but what amp???

(b) get something that’s more of just a pedal platform, though my guess is I may also end up having to invest in a OD/Distortion pedal that I really like with it. Admittedly I haven’t taken a super deep dive on shaping a drive tone with the GX100, but from what I have done, it seems like it’s not the best solution for distortion w/o modeling—lots of tone suck.

A possible third solution I’ve considered is leaning into the full capability of the GX100 as a modeler and just getting a FR/FR powered speaker. While I know modeling has come a long way in recent years, I’m inexperienced here and do tend to be kind of old school about tube amps. However, I also know many big touring acts are solely running modelers these days, though generally higher end ones like Quad Cortex and Helix. It’s an option but I’m kind of timid about investing in that direction and then not being happy with it.

That’s all, thanks for bearing with me through this wall of text—I’ve been spending a lot of time researching and thinking about this over the past couple months, but I’d love some input, and hope at very least this can spark some fun discussions for you all.

Thank you in advance!