If you're going to go with a half stack, make sure the head has a "club" setting.

So, let's say it's a 100 watt head, there's a switch on the back that will cut it down to something like 25 watts. Most good heads now-a-days have one and it's louder than you'd think. A guy I know picked up a Sunn 300t and played it for quite a while on the low-power setting before realizing that's what it was. He said he was afraid of what the full 100 watts was going to do in terms of volume.


I point this out because for what you're going to be doing with it, 30 - 60 tube watts is going to be more than loud enough. In fact, to get a 50 or 60 watt amp turned up loud enough to make it "happy" (they're designed to operate at certain volumes), you're going to be making a lot of people's ears bleed.

Also, if you're going to be playing with the acoustic players, they're not going to be very happy about you drowing them out. Conversely, you're not going to be at all happy to play through an amp that's turned down so low you can't get a good tone out of it.