I'm also a fan of three H9's. Even though I have an H3000, H4000, and H8000 ready to go, the accessibility of controls and feature set grouping of the H9's allow more immiedate response to experimentation. I use them mostly in the same basic arrangement most guitarists find useful: ModFactor/PitchFactor, TimeFactor/Modfactor, and Space with an expression pedal per H9.
I bought the 1st Core and Base unit about a year ago and then added enough algorithm's to qualify for the MAX as soon as it came out. It came as quite a surprise, as I hadn't been following the product publicity at all, that one day I planned to buy several more algorithms; I booted up to be greeted by a notice that I got all the remaining alg's for free! WOW! I bought the 3rd H9 because I was always adding another stomp box in somewhere that I felt I was missing something with two H9's. like KC found, 3 is the next best thing to 4 H9's 🙂
The H9 is an amazing product. The only thing that is a bit limiting is the performance of the iPad control app. I'm using a 4th gen iPad, and the scrolling to find the right algorithm is bit slow. If all the algorithms fit on one screen – however abbreviated – it would speed setup up.
