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Eric, if you only have one amp, THAT is the one to have. I can close my eyes and dream about the sounds that came from that amp. Wow.

I use 2 amps and 3 cabs in various combinations depending on my mood, the guitars I feel like using, and the size of the venue.

A RIG

This is my Koch Twintone with one of my 2 favorite cabinets. The Twintone is a 2-channel, 50-watt EL-34 powered amp. The clean channel is non-master-volume and goes from bright and pristine to gritty and ZZ Top-py with a wide range of useable tones. The crunch channel does low-fuzz grit all the way to high-gain, rectifier-like shenanigans and has a 2-control gain/volume cascading-type distortion. Both channels have active tone stacks, which means instead of "wide open" at 10 and full cut at 0 (like most amps), 5 is "normal", 10 is boosted, 0 is cut. I disconnected and discarded the reverb tank. I'm running Groove Tube 12AX7 tubes in the pre, with their Mullard clone in the phase inverter slot for extra oomph. I only use the clean channel for recording; live I stay with the crunch channel and vary my crunch/clean with the guitar volume.

The cabinet in this picture (and the next one, below) is a late-1980s Marshall 1965B. Originally spec'd out as a 4x10, I converted this one (by way of a new baffle board I made myself) to 2x12 and it is currently loaded with a pair of Celestion Vintage 30 speakers running at a combined 8 ohms. I used 1/2" void-free birch ply for the baffle board. I also re-did the grille cloth from boring black to Bluesbreaker, my favorite looking cloth. Note the aesthetically pleasing offset placement of the Marshall logo.

B RIG

This is my heavily modded "Chiba" Classic 50 with the same cab as the above picture. Normally, the Classic 50 as manufactured by Peavey is a 2-channel, 50-watt, EL-84 powered amp - and so is my version. I've gone through the entire amp and replaced key components with higher-quality and sometimes different value parts to tweak the overall tone of the amp. Like the Twintone, the clean channel is non-master-volume, but unlike the Koch, the Chiba's clean channel stays pretty clean up to near full volume. Up in that range, the harder you hit the guitar, the grittier your tone gets. Again, I only use this channel for recording. The crunch channel is unbelievably responsive - more so than any Peavey you've ever heard or used. I can get gentle, thick classic rock tones a la Derek & the Dominoes or more aggressive, punishing modern rock tones a la recent Corrosion of Conformity. The crunch channel has a unique 3-control design, with distortion controlled both in the preamp and power amp sections plus a master volume. The tone stack is the traditional "cut only" type yet due to my mods is quite useful. The reverb in this amp is still operational.

Two other things to note in this picture - the Auralec "Gramma" under the speaker cab and my entire pedalboard on top. The Gramma helps reduce the loss of bass frequencies to the floor, enabling me to run the amp at generally lower volumes on stage as well as making sure I'm giving the FOH a better, thicker tone. My pedalboard consists of all BOSS pedals, a TU-2 Tuner, CE-3 Chorus, and analogman-modded BD-2 Blues Driver used mostly as a boost for solos. Big Mike will chime in with jealousy over my beautiful coily cables at this point.

BIG RIG

Here's my Classic 50 on top of my other 2 cabinets at a big outdoor gig we played this summer. The top cab is my #1 favorite cab. It is an early-1990s Marshall 1965A; the slant (top) version of the above cab. It is loaded with the stock Celestion 4x10 configuration. The bottom cab is a recent model 1960A - I'm not sure of the year but I believe it to be circa 2002. It was in miserable shape when I got it - ripped tolex, ripped (and missing) grillecloth, broken casters, broken handles, and botched wiring. I put 2 Celestion Vintage 30s in it, wired it properly, replaced the casters and handles, and regrilled it to match my other two cabinets. It sounds divine in the right situations... but nothing sounds better than my sweet 4x10.

There you have it!

--chiba