I love that classic crunch the 800 gets, but I think it is a one trick pony.
That's my impression as well, but I haven't spent that much time with them.
On gear, I haven't owned too many things I didn't like, as I auditioned nearly everything before buying.
Guitar
I have a few guitars but the only I use constantly is a Parker Fly Deluxe. It's not perfect in every way, but it does many things fabulously well. The guitar is quite bright sounding, so I compensate a bit by turning presence down a little more than I otherwise would and roll off the tone control a hair at times.
The neck pickup sounds fairly sweet, but because the guitar has a 24 fret neck, the pickup cannot be mounted right under the two octave harmonic. I don't go to the 24th fret very often and if I could choose a 22 fret neck I might for the tone trade-off at the neck pickup. The piezo at the bridge sounds OK, if a bit quacky (don't they all?).
The switches on the original version of the guitar (of which mine is one) are laid out in an inconvenient fashion. The newer Fly's have a more accessible layout and dispenses with a volume pot that practically nobody used. So, on my guitar, the pickup selector is located below (and very close to) a volume pot that is almost impossible not to hit when you're changing pickups. I switch pickups constantly, sometimes in the middle of a phrase, so that was a big deal. On top of that, the guitar is "wired" with ribbon strips instead of point to point wiring, so changing the positions of the switch and volume knob wasn't a reasonable option.
I've worked around it by doing two things:
Placed an o-ring under the knob I don't use to add more friction and make it less prone to turning accidentally.
Pressed a piece of plastic tubing onto the pickup selector switch to make it longer. This way, it sticks up above the tops of the knobs, so I can flick it quickly without hitting anything else.
The action of the guitar is ridiculously good and the frets essentially never wear, as they're made of stainless steel. The guitar is very "live;" you can feel the thing vibrating when playing. Despite its light weight (5 pounds), it has very good sustain.
Amps
I have two amp setups, a Boogie Mark IV combo with an EVM and a rack consisting of a Mesa Triaxis, DSP 128, Hush IIc and Mesa 2:90 power amp.
The Triaxis and 2:90 sound very nice together and offer an incredible variety of tones. At some point I'd like to add a line mixer to add the effects from a side chain instead of placing it into the Triaxis effects loop as it is now. I'd also like to control the effects levels with a volume pedal, to add and remove long delay progressively, instead of switching it on and off.
The rack powers two 1x12 cabinets of my own design, which are closed backed and have dual ports, tuned to 120HZ. They're loaded with JBL's. 4x12's sound beefier, but this setup has plenty of balls, goes loud as hell and is fairly compact.
The Mark IV is a nice compact combo and sounds pretty good as is. Plugged into a 4x12 cab, it kills.