My Line 6 is nice, but I think I'm ready for some tubes

I have an Axsys 212, which sounds pretty good, but the main thing I notice about it is that, once it's dirty it stays dirty. For example, on the other setup I was using (a no name amp and a Boss overdrive pedal) when I turn my guitar down to say 3 or 4 I would lose a little volume, but the sound clean up very nice, as if the pedal wasn't even on. Then when I turned up to 9 or 10 it would overdrive again. On my line 6 when I trun it down you can still hear it trying to distort, and I end up having to change to another setting to clean up.

I was wondering if anyone new of a good bang for the buck tube combo maybe like 100 or so watts. I really want a marshall but have only played like one. What do you guys think? Or am I bitchin a little too much and I should stay w/ my line 6.

Well, first of all, wattage is much different in a tube amp. You could take a 50 watt full tube amp (say a Fender Vibrolux) and it would blow a 100 watt solid state amp (say and Ultimate Chorus) out of the water. I have a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe 4x10 and it's "frickin'" loud (60 watt). Bang for the buck....

I'd go with a 15 to 30 watt full tube amp (trust me...they get really loud and awesome tone). Try the Fender Blues Jr. 1 12" speaker, full tube, reverb, and tone that will make you cry.

Tube amps sound better the louder they get. The advantage of a low watt full tube amp is...you can get that sweet tube tone and have you amp at a tollerable volume at the same time.

Try them out...go to a store and crank it...pretty cool.

Oh, PS...what type of music will you be playing...I guess that should have been the first question.

I got rid of a Marshall ValveState65R (one of the second generation solid state / tube hybrids) recently, I personally didn’t like it as the dirty channel wasn’t dirty enough and the clean channel broke up at high volume. That’s just me though! The overall tone wasn’t bad but Id expects that from Marshall. In the future I will pay the extra and go with all valve I think!

As for the Line 6 kit, I’m running a Pod Pro into a desk and I’ve also had a problem with getting nice clean sounds. I settled for the tube preamp simulation eventually however this does involve changing channels, which is not too difficult if you have the VASTLY overpriced floorboard controller. The floorboard controller is a midi controller and it may be worth trying out other cheaper brands!

I Mostly play blues, and rock. I just pretty much play for fun, but I want something thats versatile(sp?) and can adapt to just about anything. I was considering one of the fender combos also.

And yes, the line 6 floor board is very overpriced. It's been that way since 98 when the axsys first came out. You would think they would drop the price a little. My ordeal is that if I go ahead and buy it I would have invested over $1100 into this amp and I could have had a descent set of tubes.

Have you considered the resale value of the Line6 amp ? If I like something I generally jazzed it up to the 9s rather than sell it and get the next model up simply because a) Im lazy and b) resale value is always horrible. I think Im working round to saying I got the vastly overpriced controller ! Shame on me !!!