The clean channel on this thing is great. Nice and lively, the EQ can take you from dark jazz to Fender jangle. It'll break up at about half way and I'd say was easily loud enough to gig with. Takes single-coils just as well as humbuckers. Sounds a little darker with 'buckers but if you take the guitar volume back a bit you can get a perfectly acceptable tone.
I was pleased so I switched over to the dirty channel. To be honest my first impression was 'It's bollocks.' I felt a bit let down and started thinking about a Blackstar pedal to use on the clean channel. Then I started fiddling with the EQ. The amp has gob loads of mid-range, tons of bass and lots of treble on tap. I found that winding back the mids, taking the bass back, keeping the treble around 12-1 o'clock and winding the gain between 12 (humbuckers) to 3 o'clock (single coils) and oh my fucking God. It's not a tight, mesa chug chug tight bottom end sort of gain, in fact it sounds a little bit messy and loose but it's got a tone to it. It makes you want to play hard, to dig into the strings and force the amp to scream back at you...and it delivers in spades. Both the Humbucker-equipped Ash Radian Strat and the single-coil loaded Strat sounded great through this thing, toneful I-want-to-just-keep-doing-this , thick, full, punchy leads and crunchy in-your-face rhythms.
I reckon a nice overdrive pedal to get that edgy breakup tone on the clean channel (unless you have no neighbours) and you've got a killer rig.
I can see why a quick 5 minute play at the shop with some random guitar could you leave you feeling a bit underwhelmed, the amp needs a bit of dialling in depending on cab/guitar used but the tones are there with a little bit of time spent.
