Boudoir Guitar
Rock Star
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- 3,911
Exactly. A Marshall Valvestate sounded the way it did because...it was a solid state preamp that had a single tube operating at low voltage into cheap solid state amps that didn't have a ton of headroom feeding a budget speaker. It's a sum of product design decisions, not "they shoulda put the tube in the power amp". If they put a tube in the power amp, implemented as poorly as they did the tube in the preamp, it would have sounded terrible.The whole point of those was to make something cheap and reliable that they could label as a "tube amp".
Of course a modern digital modeler into the effects return of a a DSL2000 (likely driving a cab loaded with significantly better speakers than what was included in the Valvestate stuff) sounds better.