Just talking about myself here... GAS is a bitch, LOL.
Yeah, most of the time, we guitar players are the ones obsessed with the tone, after all I've been one of those young rockstar wannabes cranking full stacks in tiny bars for no more than 20 people who cared jack shit about my tone, but in the end I was the one feeling like playing Wembley all while doing the Townshend windmill, hahaha.
Of course, better tone can inspire you. Playing PODs, Digitech GNXs and whatnot thru a solid state combo back in my teens got me GASing forever for a tube amp and when I finally got one I felt the world was at my feet. You know, feeling that punch in the back of your legs when hitting a power chord the first time was one of those 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' moments, you know what I mean...
No one but me had that excitement, even my drummer back then had a running joke for me saying "Yeah, now we can still hear your mistakes, but louder". Boy, he was right... one of the things I realised about using cheap equipment is how they can easily hide your mistakes. That tube amp was merciless and forced me to practice and get better.
Nowadays I'm so tired of lugging a 4x12 cab, my tube head and a damn coffin-sized pedalboard to gigs, that's one of the primary reasons I bought my AX8, and even when I was totally aware of the FAS quality for almost a decade, I was still a bit skeptical about replacing my rig with that little black box (prior to the AX8 I had a POD HD500X as backup but after 1 or 2 gigs with it I sold it, damn that thing was disappointing) and haven't looked back since I plugged that baby for the first time.
Now ever since I'm part of the FAS gang, I have to admit being diving head first into a whole new rabbit hole... FW updates.
Cliff (blessed be his soul) had spoiled us so much that every single FW update he posts feels like Christmas for us, but sometimes it leads to some kind of paralysis. We all know and love how our units sounds at the time but knowing Cliff will surprise us in the near future with a new epiphany keeps me wondering 'what if I wait to track/reamp until...' and most of the time it's just me being over obsessed with tone to the point of nonsense as my Axe FX III sounds beastly right now.
First and foremost, as I said, my transition back from tube to digital was fueled by FAS getting modeling to the point of really nailing the tone of tube amps where you can't practically tell one from the other in a blind test. Then there was the absolute convenience of not having to carry around mammoth rigs and more importantly, the consistency. But as Jon said, if only you could pack all the FAS magic sauce in a tiny Pocket POD-sized bean, oh well...