IamSeaDevil
WTF? FTW!
Today's stupid deal is tempting
I had the older version and it would have been great if I was in a hard rock band. It didn't clean up as much as I would like.
Now I wish I bought it
I have two older ones and while I agree with you, I also can disagree as well. One of the things I did with my was get rid of the Chinese Tubes in them and replaced with JJ's. This helped to get rid of the buzzyness of the sound. The second thing was to replace V2 with a 5751 instead of 12AX7. This helped to clean up the sound more and your guitar's volume knob has more control. The tone controls on the amp have more of an impact as well due to the reduced gain of the tone stage. Last of all, run the master between 6-7 and adjust your preamp between 4-6 depending on how much overall volume you need. Use the guitar volume knob to clean up the sound as necessary and dial it to 10 for crunch.
I was able to discuss this Michael Soldano a few years back at NAMM and when I did, he had great big Cheshire Cat grin and said: "Sweet Spot of the amp".
you can't disagree with me because I said it wouldn't clean up as much as "I" like
I too swapped tubes (I think I put a 12AT7 in as well as putting in JJs for the power), but it also comes downs to it being an EL amp which I never like EL cleans. For overdrive, I'll take ELs all day long.
I need to learn about tubez at some point. I have no idea about all the differences. I just buy amps that I think sound good.