Line 6 has pretty well covered the amplified stringed instrument market and is widely distributed. It will be difficult (to say the least) to maintain exponential growth rates just by battling it out with Fender (which finally introduced a CyberTwin modeling combo at the last Winter NAMM, thereby putting the ultimate seal of approval on the concept of DSP in a guitar amp), MESA/Boogie (the last major holdout, rumored to be developing an all-analog, mostly-tube amp with tone options as wide-ranging as Line 6's high-end combos), Rocktron, Peavey, Crate, Hughes & Kettner and mighty Roland (which now have their own modeling amps as well). Amptone.com lists 10 "digitally controlled DSP-algorithm modeling amps," and several other types of modeling amps as well.

Line 6's Director of Product Development/New Business Steve De Furia locates the company's sustainable competitive advantage in more efficient software. "The Line 6 Amp Farm uses one Pro Tools DSP Farm card," he points out. "Other companies offer amp modeling plugins, but their software requires two cards to do what Amp Farm does. We don't patent that kind of intellectual property, because applying for a patent would disclose what we're doing to get more work out of the same DSP engine. Our ability to do more with the same silicon is a significant competitive advantage."

Unfortunately for Line 6, this is an advantage that will erode over time due to Moore's Law (which says that silicon doubles in capacity and halves in price every 18 months). Eventually DSP chips will become like desktop CPU's: so powerful and fast that the only people who appreciate more compact, faster code are other programmers. End users like me couldn't care less that Microsoft is a feature-bloated, sluggish, unresponsive monster of a word processor. It runs about as fast as I can type most of the time, and I can exchange files with anyone. When the next generation Pro Tools DSP Farm card costs half as much and does twice as much as today's version, is anyone out at the end of a sound wave going to care whether Line 6's code jockeys can wring more performance out of it than the software team around the corner?

If pure programming chops can't fuel the sales rocket's next stage, what will? Remember what I said about exchanging Word files? Therein lies a possible source of even faster growth in a bigger market. Music is a collaborative art form, and despite the best efforts of the record industry to make it behave, the Internet has the potential to become the ultimate studio without walls, radio station without playlists, jukebox with infinite storage. Line 6 is looking hard at the Web, as you might expect from an LA-based company backed by Silicon Valley venture capital. Hoping to leverage the network effects of the Web as a platform for future growth, Line 6 is shipping all new products with SoundDiver™ software, which allows you to use your PC or Mac as a superduper front panel, or download new sounds from the Line 6 ToneTransfer Web library at www.line6.com.

As a promotional outlet, the Internet can help keep Line 6 at the top of the digital modeling amp category. But if it figures out how to tap into the network effects of the Web with a new kind of musician's Internet appliance, Line 6 could accelerate to warp speed. De Furia points out that " Today, the computer is the main tool people use to create music as well as to listen to other people's music. So we're looking at the technology on the Web and where we can fill a need that doesn't yet exist."

That's thinking beyond the next trade show cycle, beyond the safety of the immediate future. It's risky business: a high percentage of those dreamers who debut a vision of the future at their first NAMM show never make it back to a second. Of those who do, an even higher percentage go the way of Alesis once they succeed in the marketplace. Ultimately, it may be Line 6's board, its management team and the company's ability to execute that decide whether its next big bet will pay off as well as the POD.