Good stuff, Charger! I do think the POD was a good choice for you, based on the distorted tracks. They've got that distortion pedal sound, more than the sound of an amp overheating... which was the sound I was after. It's all a matter of what we hear in our heads, which makes it good that we have choices.
I sold my POD because it didn't sound like what I was looking for. The POD, V-amp and the others are advertised as a way to record loud amp sounds without actually having loud amps blazing. I was looking for the sound that I used to get out of my Marshall stack that I hocked 12 years ago. It's a thick, hissy, noisy sound, as most amps are when you crank them as far as they'll go and play on them for a few hours. When I got the POD, which I picked first because I fell for the hype that since everyone has one and it costs more, it must be better. I played and tweaked and played and tweaked and to my ears, never could get anything that didn't sound like one of those hot rodded customized amps that start to break up at 3, rather than 8... It's the sound you hear on most cds, and have for years now, but it wasn't the sound I was after. I complained and griped about it, and asked a million questions from other users and never could get a setting that sounded good enough to be worth the 349 the thing cost me. Finally, my guitar playing cousin offered me some cash for it and I sold it, disgusted with the whole thing. My wife got tired of hearing me complain, paged through a musician's friend and orded the V-amp. I got it, expecting more of the same noise I heard from the POD, and was pleasingly surprised when I was able to dial up the sound I was after extremely quickly. Like I've said before, to my ears the V-amp sounds more like real amps, where the POD sounds like idealized and customized amps. I've never heard a 100 watt amp cranked to 10 be quiet and without some noise, so that's what I was wanting to hear from an emulator. That's just me. If I heard the tones I wanted from the POD, as Charger does, than it might be worth paying 3 times as much for the POD. But if I didn't have a crunch sound in mind, I would probably go the discount route.
That's why I'm not a good tech snob. I don't care what the name on the box is, as long as it sounds and feels right. That's why after all these years, my Les Pauls and Jacksons all ended up in pawn shops and I waste my days with
a Yamaha Pacifica and a Westone Spectrum. If the Beatles or Queen had recorded their stuff on 128 track digital disks with the latest and greatest technology, I might be worried about my results... but they had crap gear(in comparison with what is available to us) and they turned out ok.