Oh I realize that no piece of gear will ever be perfect. Things wear out and/or break. My fear of tube amps comes from and old Marshall 9100 or 9200 Power Amp that I used to own. Obnoxiously Heavy and very, very delicate. I replaced the tubes in it once and it was a bloody crime how much it cost! So, that put me off of tubes for a long time. I had an old Johnson Stereo head for a long time and never liked the sound of it but it never failed on me... I liked my Laney TT100H but there's that fear of tubes cropping up again.
Getting it set up for the show was luck really. I plugged my G-system in to use only as a footswitch. This way I was only hearing the Kemper. I went through all of the the onboard sounds. While doing so, I accidentally bumped the "bank up" button once or twice and hit upon several sounds that were close to what I was hearing in my head for my tone. I adjusted the effects for 5 presets. 2 clean channels, 2 rhythm sounds and a lead tone. The only thing that I really wanted to do was to move them to the proper bank in the g-system. I wasn't able to figure that part out before the show.
As far as my learning curve, I work with computers for a living and usually have to figure out what someone else did and fix it. Definitely comes in handy from time to time!
So far the Kemper is great. I love it. I can't say enough about it!