Thanks for the info. It may be difficult to play that particular amp without traveling maybe an hour or more.. The music shops in the area have limited showroom stock but I'll do some calling around about it. It is part of the reason that I shop online so much (cost savings can be substantial also).

I was wondering if this is the amp that you have and also what you think of the smaller Peavey Vypyr 15. As far as output for a live performance I don't anticipate that happening any time too soon so I am thinking of this first amp as a practice amp really. The other difficulty with my selection process is that I've never owned or really played much electric guitar so I don't know what features are valuable in an amp. With the limited playing that I've done all that I can really hear is that adjusting the guitar's tone controls changes the sound from low to high (like bass/treble) and reverb creates an echo-like effect? I'm not sure what too much gain would sound like.

I would like to achieve a David Gilmour-like sound (as much as I can without a Strat) for playing some of the leads that he has written over the years that I will be trying to learn at some point. Otherwise I don't have a desired sound in mind. I think that I should be able to play clean jazz tones with the Viking also? I'm unsure how to manipulate sound through the amp/distortion box stuff so anything you can suggest would be a great help if you might have the time to give me a bit of advice on it.