I'm a soon-to-be bassist owner of the HX Stomp XL (It's in the post) and I'm really super sold on what these units can do, bang for buck. I'm essentially retiring 3/4 of my pedalboard, only keeping my pitchblack tuner (just so I can plug in at that side of the board and have single tap mute/tuning), and my Source Audio Aftershock to run in the FX loop, as the dirts I have dialed in are amazing.
The only parallel paths I plan to run is a preamp block sending via the L output to my amp's FX return, and the same amp/cab block via the R output to XLR/DI for FOH scenarios. My question is, how different do the preamp blocks sound to the full amp block (including the poweramp modelling)? Could I say, split the path after the preamp and send that to just a cab block, and save myself a chunk of DSP in the process? Or is it worthwhile to run the full amp/cab block for the extra colour the poweramp modelling would add?