To Armen
Yeah,you should really hear this thing on some different settings.It sounds like nothing else.But Mike likes those vintage kinda sounds and that's what you heard.You can buy it used on ebay,check it out,if you don't like it you can always sell it and get your money back.This thing is seriously in demand,people wait for 3 months to get new ones.
If you going straight into sound card just use POD,you can't really talk about any kind of serious sound in this situation anyway.
To Ambitot Pu Phang
I would go with Ibanez but only if I had to,I don't really care much for mass production stuff anymore