....One year on.... after the love has gone.....
Well I've had this amp for a year now and done maybe 6 gigs with it so the honeymoon is well and truly over. The reason I wanted this amp was because it produced great rock tones on the dirty channel at home and gig volumes which it definitly does. But the reality is that my band play 60's, 70's, 80's covers and some current pop tunes and for 80% of the set I play clean. The clean channel on this amp sounds nice up to maybe half way on the volume but to get past a drummer I need it 75% on the clean channel with the master around the same. At that volume the clean channel loses any clarity and starts to sound harsh and brittle and has serious issues cutting through. I'm now starting to appreciate how good the clean was on my old Hot Rod Deluxe. I've come to the realization that a good clean channel is more important to me than having a second dirty channel. For the past few gigs I just run clean any way and get the dirt I need from my M13. The other thing that really bothers me now about this amp is the weight factor, it is seriously heavy and lifting it in and out of my car for every rehearsal and gig is become a real pain in the back.

I realize that I may be able to solve the clean channel issues somewhat with a change of tubes and speaker but that stuff is trial and error and in my experience you can quickly rack up the cost of a new amp with tube and speaker experiments. I am now seriously considering ditching the HT40. There appears to be a huge choice of tube amps out there at the moment but when you analyze requirements and read reviews you quickly start to eliminate the contenders and find that they all seem to have their faults, short comings and reliability problems. I'm seriously starting to consider a Mustang III as a versatile gigging amp. I do like the clean amp models on my Mustang I and I think the 12" Celestion with the open back cabinet should make a big improvement on the MI and from what I've been reading there appears to be lots of people gigging successfully with the MIII. I really just need a good clean sound that holds together well at band volume, I can use pedals or my M13 for the rest. In fact if the Mustang III was to work out I could even consider selling the M13.