Well, THAT stinks! I have had the Vox you have, also an AD50, and they are great sounding amps; I just don't know how reliable they will be in the long haul. I DO have a Jimmie Vaughan Strat, and actually sold several much more expensive Strats because, to ME, the Tex-Mex pickups sounded the most "Stratty" to me. I have a Blues Junior that I felt sounded pretty "boxy" until I had most of the BillM mods done, including the expensive Transformer replaced. I also replaced the speaker with a Texas Heat. Not exactly stock anymore, eh?! While I really liked how it sounded after that, you could STILL get some bad sounds out of it if you didn't EQ it properly, IMHO. I'll never get my investment out of the Junior, but then again, now, I don't ever want to sell it....