What a nice post, hunter. I can only join the rank of thanks sayers.
What amps and guitars impressed you the most and why? I would like to hear more about that.
The amps that impressed me most were:
Egnater Renegade for being an amazing amp in a total package for relatively low $$. And Bruce Egnater for being the great guy he is - extremely customer oriented and skilled.
This Cicognani Brutus Live because it sounded awesome for a "Toaster" amp. Never heard of them before and they have a load of stuff, a full MIDI controllable tube head too (which I didn't hear).
Bugera because they are so cheap and sound good.
I played the Marshall Haze mini stack but it wasn't really great, it sounded Mini too.
Guitars: PRS was the hit for me. Probably because I just bought one. And I really love the look of some of those ESPs.