I played the previous incarnation, forgot exactly what it'a called... VC-5? The shop around where I used to live still has one in stock. SERIOUS amount of gain, and while the single tone control's a bit of a downer, it has a suprisingly useful range of tones on tap. Fairly dark, edgy, contemporary sounding tube overdrive, not sure exactly how to describe it, but... Hmm. Maybe if you just took the basic character of a crate solid state flexwave distortion, and made it suck a lot less?
One of these things, modded to run a real
speaker cab, with a graphic EQ int he effects loop (and probably a reverb behind it), would be a seriously cool gigging setup, and even pushing an 8" speaker, it's a good practice setup. For the price (forghot exactly whaT, but udner $200), it's a solid buy, IMO, and I've been fighting the urge to take it with me every time I've been in there.
Now, if only it had a second channel...
-D
