I have a lot of good things to say about this amp, but I'll try to keep it short. As I was shopping for a new amplifier, one of the employees at the local music store reccommended a tube amp for me. So, off I went to find a good one. I tried a Fender Blues Jr. ("the" tube amp)and just wasn't very interested. The Valve Jr. sounded amazing with my 1980's Epi Sheraton II. For the price, it was great for me. May not fit some styles such as metal, as the distortion gets a little messy if you're playing with the volume all the way up. Very loud, very simple, very sturdy, very sweet tone!

I used to own a version 1 with the single 4 ohm output and crappy 4 ohm speaker. Sounded very muffled.

This time I made sure I got a new version 3, with the 4, 8, and 16 ohm outputs. I replaced the tubes with a JJ 12AX7 preamp tube and a Tube Doctor TD EL84-STR power tube. Then I removed the 16 ohm Eminence ceramic magnet speaker and dropped in an 8 ohm Weber Signature Alnico 8 inch speaker, switched the speaker plug to the 8 ohm output and viola! It's the best small tube amp I've ever heard. The muffled sound is gone. Bass and treble are both MUCH, MUCH better with the Weber speaker and the new tubes (after a breaking in period) produce rich, smooth harmonics. This is a simple mod that will cost you about $60 total and will not require you to rewire anything. You can always put it back in stock condition in 5 minutes if you need to. But the difference is dramatic.

One note: the TD power tube is slightly shorter than the stock Sovtek tube, so the spring holder will hang loose and create problems. I just used needle nose pliers to complete remove the spring harness. Doesn't seem to make any difference and again, it can be returned to stock in a two seconds if necessary.

This amp gives you the real thing. Tube tone. This is a real guitar amp and you will be happy with it. I love the way it sound, so dark and nice. I really love playing on this amp. Weigh out the pros/ cons, what you want to do with your amp, and so on. Then go try them out. This amp sounds great cranked in a living room/ bedroom. But very loud. You will need something different to play with a drummer. What ever sounds best to you go for it, but this amp sounds great to me.

I'm not sure why people are saying there's no clean tone on this thing. Cleans are about all I could get. I had to turn up past reasonable apartment volume to get any drive at all. It fought like to stay clean. When I did get it to overdrive, all I got was a muddy, fuzzy overdrive. Not a good sound at all. I don't know what all the fuss is with these things. Save your money and get a Fender Vibro Champ XD.

This amp has a lot of punch but no clean sound at all! If you want it for recording you'll need a tech to go along with it. It has, for lack of a better description, lots of low end crap going on more than likely from sloppy construction. Uncontrollable noise, doesn't matter where you set your knobs if your below half volume on the amp. Crank it up and bang your head and your good to go 'cause you won't notice it much if you keep the barrage going. Yeah, I know, it's a low end amp but if you read the sales pitch on their site it should be better than this.