For me, it was a couple of guys from the MyLesPaul forum back in 2015. I was struggling with versatility from amps, and using a lot of pedals switched by a TheGigRig Midi 14. It was great setup, but I just couldn't find a channel switching amp that had the sort of crunchy sounds I wanted, and could drive harder with pedals, as well as a clean channel with a lot of headroom and brightness. A 65Amps Whiskey and an Orange Rockerverb 50 both failed to please me quite close together, the Orange for being unable to provide the bite I wanted in the mix on the crunchy channel, and the Whiskey for lack of headroom on the clean channel. (I thought the Orange was going to be the one, but first gig, used the interval between sets to dash home and get my Marshall 2203. We were a few minutes late starting the second set, but it just sounded so much better for it.)
So it was a choice of either getting a good Fender Twin, or maybe Vox AC30, to lug around with a heavy pedalboard, Marshall JMP 2203, 4x12 cab as well as guitars, or seeing if there was a more grown up way of solving the problem. As a long term MLP forum member I'd been following threads about the latest modelling amps. I'm a design engineer by trade, physicist by education, and most of the competing solutions smelt a little too much of BS in their descriptions of where the magic came from, so I went for the one that seemed least like "snake oil".
Huge thanks to
@Pwrmac7600, @KenG,
@NeubyWanKaneuby, and the late, great and extremely passionate frankv of
https://www.mylespaul.com/forum/amp-modeling.39/ for pointing me in the right direction a few years back. From the very first gig with an Axe FX II and MFC-101 I knew this was a better direction. Still got those, but the Axe FX III and FC-12 that followed were kind of inevitable. Still loving where I landed, and it just keeps getting better.
Liam