- and what are tubes?

hehe as soon as I saw that line, I knew there was gonna be someone who says "tubes are better, that's that." Lemme try to explain this scientifically:

-With tubes amps, the signal is jammed through these vacume tubes inside the amp (this was before actual diodes and transistors were invented that can carry current with no signel loss), and when you turn the distortion knob up, it overflows the current into the tubes, so that the electrons start running into eachother and creating interferance, or DISTORTION, the sound you're accostomed to hearing guitarists using.

-Solid state amps use diodes to convert AC/DC power, so the signal leaves the rectifier exactly how it got there. This means that the sound is more precise. When solid state amps do distortion, it runs it through a little computer in the amp that simulates the distortion tubes would create (cuz that's what we're accustomed to. The exact-duplicating property of diode rectifiers (as opposed to tube rectifiers) also means a much more bright clean sound.

People say that tube amps are better and generally sound "warmer," but that's actually only a matter of taste. Plus people make solid state amps that copy the EXACT sound of a particular tube amp (line 6 actually leads this field). A friend of mine who's been playing guitar for 16 years claims he can't tell the difference between the line6 vetta's model of a dual recofier and the real thing. But the bottom line is there's no such thing as a universally "good" sound, so try a variety of solid state amps and tube amps and find YOUR good sound.