I play in a punky original band, and over the years I've made my favorite sounds I like with a TubeWorks RT922 Pre Amp, Ramshead Muff, Morley Silver Wah, a GMajor2, and a Rickenbacker 330, all through custom stereo 2x12 self-powered guitar cabinets I built myself on a CNC (I work for a loudspeaker manufacturer for 20+ years). The amps in my speakers are Class AB Mono 300 Watt with Linear power supplies.
I never considered going emulation-based for whatever emotional perceptions I had. Instead I bought things like a Mesa TriAxis to try and control all my sounds. But a good friend guitar player who is in a famous punk band told me he did finally, and I started considering it. I realized how fragile and limited even the Mesa TriAxis was, and thought that this level of complexity with low reliability was not a great solution.
I had heard and seen Kempers, but honestly, I ignored everything about modeling processors, so I didn't pay attention. When someone told me about the profiling function of the Kemper, I got really interested.
I contacted my famous friend again, and he happened to have a couple of them at his studio and brought one home for me to try out.
I called another friend who is a tube guitar amp engineer to come over, and with a few beers we started digging into the Kemper. Needless to say, our heads exploded with excitement of what this thing could literally do. We tested out the profiling functions and laughed to ourself how rediculously good it was. I was sold.
So, I bought a Stage Profiler to purely model/profile my own rig that I have spent years making my own sound out of. I plan to expand from there, but that's my starting point.
I guess I was already halfway there having been using self-powered guitar speakers, profiling my electronics and putting right back into my cabs is as good as it gets.
I'm still stuck with a couple of pedals I can't get rid of yet, so my pedal footprint hasn't shrunk too much yet. I'll work on that over time.
I don't think I need too much help with anything. I have found all the relevant info online and in videos that I've needed to know so far. The manual, while extensive and complete, is not very good at answering application or workflow questions.
I'm in SoCal, USA.