BTW, I'm totally not outright dissing the concept of plug-ins. In my latest project, even with the pretty excellent collection of analog compressors I own, there are some things I can do with the Waves RVox and Renaissance compressors that I can't do with my hardware. Also, the McDSP Filterbank is really excellent in my opinion, and makes up for the extremely minimal EQ on my JH-416. Also, the Cube-Tec Spectral DeHiss plug-in really is the most effective and transparent denoising technology I've ever used. One technique I've discovered is that if I record a guitar direct, I can use Spectral DeHiss to take out the inherent buzz/hum picked up by the guitar's pickups, and reamp the signal, and it sounds really excellent and natural. While reamping guitar, I've also discovered that the Thermionic Culture Culture Vulture patched into the signal before it goes out to the amp can seriously make up for some limitations in a guitar amp. In my studio right now my artist friend and I are using a friend's Vox AC15 reissue that doesn't have great crunch, but the TCVC really takes care of that and gives the amp sound a lot of girth as well, even in a non-distorting setting.
Nicholas