Can both of you share what is now used for guitar sounds?
On the more budget end most audio interfaces these days will have a Hi-Z input for guitar, there are many great amp/stompbox emulation plugins these days.
There are also various plugins that emulate a single kind of amp, but they're not quite as convincing, or as popular.
The Kemper was designed by the same dude who designed the Access Virus, which is more than two decades old now and still considered a classic pseudo-analog synth implemented with DSP.