The amp is fender prestige 65 (the discontinued edition). Solid state. For the presentation we didn't hook it through the system but we did for all of our rehearsals and it was fine, I just thought that might be it. Later I realized my clean channel (the channel I was on for our presentation) was on ten and I remembered seeing a techie student mess with the amp right before we began! Then I remembered up at Dunham's Music how someone blew a marshall stack because they put it on 10. You think that's it, why didn't it pop after I brought it home? I just put my guitar through it and I have no idea what the school runs for PA. By the way, a scringy noise is a high-distortion ( >80db ) scream with a pitch of high "b" or sharper. It is very displeasing to the ear is equivalent to a continuos version of the sound heard when a speaker is blown.