I agree with L, the Tube Amp book, does have some good info and some great pictures, I think Aspen Pittman had a great idea, he has a book that is in it's 4th or 5th revision, has sold many copies, and besides a description of his business and his amp collection comments, he actually wrote almost nothing himself, I need an idea like that. Yes a little gain goes a long, long , long way, and you can have too much distortion very easily, a clean sound with lots of headroom is alot harder to get........