[Steel and wood]

Originally Posted by clintj

I'm a tube purist, but for the range of tones you're looking for you may want something like the Boss Katana or another high quality modeler amp. I like much of the same music, and you're hunting a combo of Fender, Vox, Hiwatt, and one of the newer metal amps like an Engl or Mesa Dual Rectifier, in one amp.

If you want tube based, check out a used Mesa Express 5:50+. The cleans are quite lovely, and it still has the trademark Mesa distortion tones available along with multi-level power scaling (50, 25, and 5W on each channel). I'm selling one on behalf of a friend right now, and it was kind of fun experimenting with it while testing out all the controls for operability.

And Amplitube and Bias FX are excellent for computer based amp software, to answer your earlier question as well.

Good point and I agree.

Modelling amp like the Fender Mustang to start out with has always made a lot of sense to me also. (Easier and cheaper to experiment and find out what sounds you really like before you make a potential decision to buy a tube amp and a whole bunch of pedals).