[Dacious]

Every week I get to compare my SF Vibrolux Reverb with my bandmate's 2 x 12 HR Deville. His amp does not sound terrible. But you'd have to have cloth ears indeed if you couldn't hear the diff.

It is partly the reverb, it sounds like a digital delay pedal I have, and appears to mainly work on the top end of the frequency range. So it is shrill, and very harsh if he turns it up. I'ver heard reverb in a PV Classic 50 that sounded much more natural so it is possible with chips.

In contrast mine sounds so surfy, even with the short pan, that you start feeling seasick past 4! If he keeps all his settings moderate and stays off 'drive' it produces a nice clean for rythym playing. In contrast I struggle to get a bad sound out of mine except with extreme settings.

Side by side his produces lots of fuzzy volume, but it has no cut. The drive when stepped on is like a tube screamer with the tone and drive maxed with level on 3 and usually results in a big volume jump. You can adjust it to a reasonable crunch setting, but then the clean sound loses all it's gonads. He can ultimately bury me with volume, but more is not better in this case. This is my observation of people playing them in live venues: they do a good imitation of a clean Fender, but the moment they start breaking up they lose definition.

Because his has the linear volume pot, it's very hard for him to get the happy medium between 2.5 and 3 where it has enough, but not too much volume for an unmicced drummer.