Wise counsel indeed and I'm more inclined to sit up and pay attention as you recommended a Vox :D

I would like to know peoples thoughts on solid state amps though (the pathfinder is a solid state amp, right?). When I was gigging in the mid/late seventies they had just started to appear. Our bass player had one of the first HH amps (the one with the illuminated front panel) and absolutely loved its bright tone although the rest of us hated it. The only other people using them were the emerging punk bands and tone didn't matter to them because they couldn't play their instruments anyway. Common sense tells me they have to have got a whole lot better since those days (transistor amps, not punk bands) but can they really compare to a true valve amp?