I realized my last poll was rather too complicated, and also not even posted in the right place...

...so we're going to try this again.

Vote based on what you've actually played on. Up to 2 votes allowed (for those that prefer a different technology on either side of the instrument).

I also realized there may be lot of "closet recording artists" on here, so I'm striking the "live" stipulation I had on the previous poll.

The "Digital Signal Processing" choice is for any preamp/device that takes your analog signal, and switches it into the digital realm and back again (Line 6 Pod series, iMac with iRig, etc...).

I think the problem is that there's just too much variety within each category.

For example, I like the tube preamp on my SWR SM-400, but I'm not too crazy about the cheap tube preamps I've tried, so the "architecture" isn't really the point, whereas individual preamp makes and models would be.

Make sense?

I too had a problem with that. My live rig is built on a laptop, an advanced MIDI control foot pedalboard and a very good multi input audio interface. Setting it up for optimal fidelity is a quite delicate task, all the way from using sufficient quality AD/DA converting to balancing the digital processing in the software. As far away from "plug-n-play" you can get

Indeed - I've heard it often said that tone has as much (and perhaps a lot more) to do with build quality and implementation. Still, I think it's always interesting to see/hear if there's trends in architectures in general. For example, a similar thread I posted on Talkbass evoked a much larger percentage of a particular architecture--but you also have to take into account the percentage of players on that forum that play a particular style of music.

I'm gathering from this forum the Stick repertoire is quite a bit more eclectic, so I'm interested in seeing if there's different trends in equipment as well.