When I bought my first Indie I also suffered from having a collection of old pedals and crackly cables that were never great when I was a student. The delay pedal seemed to have completely died in the intervening years which is a bit odd for a solid state device.
So while I was at the guitar show I picked this up. It's a poor man's Pod and was in the remainder bin of one of the box shifters. Nevertheless, things have really moved on since last time I tried digital modelling and this suited me fine for quite a while.
The guitar shaped box is quite tacky but it does loads of stuff and means I could practice without annoying the neighbours. One feature I particularly like is the 'virtual pointers' on the control knobs which are a ring of LEDs. So as you change between presets, the LED shows the 'position' of the knobs and makes for much more intuitive tweaking. I briefly had a Vox valvetronix and found the fact the knobs didn't represent the current amp settings kind of counter intuitive.
It even comes with a footswitch for changing presets and a carry case. As it has a limited display, you have to get used to pressing arcane sequences of buttons for some functions (adjusting the noise gate for example) but it's all there in the manual.
These are now available secondhand for a pittance, unlike the Line 6 Pods, so if you're after a basic unit for a beginner on a budget I'd highly recommend one of these. I'm about to loan it to a friend who wishes to learn to play.
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