nzoomed said:
Thats great, the information on this site is helpful.
Yes i know about the clipping etc, but i also got confused about other people telling me that valves gave you better sound quality, eg with the preamp being the most important, i will use overdrive at times, so i think i will be better off with valves
If you're using overdrive all the time, valves are your best option, as you're obviously using it for guitar.
Back in the 70's I used to do the PA for a local band (using a mixer I built), originally we used two LARGE 200W valve PA amps for the PA (four KT88's each), these were EXTREMELY large and heavy, and unreliable (like all valve gear) - so we replaced them with a tiny Citronic 100W+100W transistor slave amp. The Citronic not only was MUCH smaller and lighter, it was vastly more reliable, sounded a lot better, and actually seemed louder as well?.
If pushed, I'd use a valve amp for a guitar (depending on the style of guitarist), but that would be all - there's a huge amount of rubbish written about how wonderful valve gear is - but those who grew up with it, built it, repaired it, generally have a more realistic view!.
You might be aware that there are a number of so called 'valve amps' and 'valve preamps' that have a single valve fitted, which isn't actually wired to anything except a heater supply - and people pay 3 - 4 times the price of a good preamp, simply because it's got a valve in it!, even though it's not doing anything at all.
Certainly if I came across a couple of valve transformers cheap (or free!) I'd build a guitar amp, just for the fun of it - like I say, they are really VERY simple to build.