[Splattle101]

I play an old Super Reverb. It was a 73 (silverface, no master volume), but it was blackfaced when I bought it in the early 90s. I've recently refurbished it with Jensens and a complete replacement of all tubes and caps. I use it with a 3 piece rock / blues band (led Zep, Joe Walsh, ZZTop).

It has plenty of volume for most situations. With a LP the break up starts pretty early around the edges of hard strummed chords. I start to hear it at about 3 on the volume. However, you should know two things about that. My particular amp is unusual in breaking up that low; and, I'm using fairly low-rated 6L6 GCs from JJ. If you wanted more clean head room you could use a higher-rated tube, like the Tube Amp Doctor 6L6 GC STRs, and they'd stay cleaner to higher volumes. I think you could also change the pre-amp 12AX7 tubes ( x 100 amp ratio) for lower gain 12AT7s (~ x 30 amplification factor). This might keep it clean further up the volume scale, but I think this sort of change would require the attention of your amp techie.

I really don't think you're likely to have a problem with not having enough clean head room.

On the other hand, the Super really loves a good overdrive or distortion. It just saturates beautifully as you push it at the front end. I have used my ancient RAT II, an Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808, a Boss OD-1 and an MI Audio Crunch Box through it, and it loves them all. The only common pedal that I've used that hasn't sounded good through this amp was the old Marshal Guvnor. It sounded a bit fake to me, which was odd because it was good through my old 100 W JMP and 4 x 12.

At the moment, the Super is the amp I go to and all the others sound flat in comparison. It sings. I figure that if I am ever in a position where I need more volume than the Super can give, it should be miked-up anyway.

Splat