valve amp for direct recording to mac

[scalywonder]

Hi all. Life has dictated that my guitar playing is now going to be home studio based, with no opportunity to fire up or record valve combos. I play into my mac through an apogee duet, and have logic which now comes with some good amp sims. The struggle i have is, is it worth investing in some form of valve amp/combo front end, which would have to have DI or speaker sim output, to get a better quality signal going in to start with, or is the result not going to be worth the cost/effort? Has anyone wrangled with this, has anyone made valve amp choices based soley on recording direct, if so, what did they choose?

[Norjef]

I've had groovy luck with newer 3 channel H/K Tubeman Recording Station - Tube, hi-voltage, built-in Red Box - Very amplike

[Robertito]

I'll bet you'd love using a Lexicon Signature 284, which was made for that sort of situation. Great cleans, amazing overdrive sounds.