I have been playing a T5 custom koa in the studio and live going on 9 years. I love the tone and flexibility. Just recently started using it with a HD500x. It is taking some time to get the tone honed in, but i am getting there. I have found that most patches created for a strat, tele or les paul definitely need tweaking before i can get the tone i prefer. My setup may be a bit unusual in that i use acoustic strings for electric work. This helps with the crunchy tone right out of the chute in my opinion. I then have to really up the compression and tweak the amp gain to get the crunchy sustained lead tome that i use for a lot of my work, including slide numbers. A trick i have used is puttng double blue compressors on the front end. Between the compressors and the gain tweaking it works pretty good. Its not the same sound i used to get with my pedalboard and amp, but it is really good.
I go straight out to the PA for live work and direct in for recording. Not sure what tone color you are looking for, but with some patience i think you can get clsoe to most anything you need, but it does take considerable time in getting there.
-Dave
