Tried a Laney two weeks ago....it was transistor though, I was not too impressed, it lacked in dynamics.
Right now I'm in the process of making the 333XL my "guinea pig" amp. Basically, I'm thinking about purchasing a second, and working out all the "upgrades" required to make it an extremely rugged amplifier. The Bugera has MY sound to it, what I've been looking for.
Before that amp I was toying with going as far as taking loads of electronics courses and building my own "Fende-Marsha-Boogie" amp, which would have my favorite sounds of all three, and a lot of headroom....the voicings I was thinking were...
Clean = Fender Princeton Reverb
Distortion = Marshall Plexi CRANKED (ie 1978-1979 era Van-Halen)
Saturation = Mesa-Boogie Triple Rectifier (ie, older model, the amp I'm bitcing about of theirs is the Deuce II)
Then I would have a solo booster on it that would allow me to knock the output up a couple more notches for solos so I did not have to rely on a soundman to boost the volume levels for solos. With the 333 this arrangement works well at gigs.
The 333XL has all this, but fails on a reliability point due to a plastic transistor clip that melts when under heavy use due to vibration (the contacts losing contact at high frequency causes arcing and sparking that generates heat and melts the clip. I have this thing cranked a LOT, so this can REALLY be a problem). This clip also affects output levels a bit, causing the amp to be too quiet once it starts wearing in far enough that the contacts start to burn and separate more permanently. I fixed this by direct soldering the transformer to the board. I've heard Bugera has fixed this, but I'm going to wait awhile to buy a newer head to confirm.
If I did not have this option, I'd probably be stuck with an old beat up 80's Peavey, Marshall Valvestate, or other cheapie Head of some kind, with some sort of ridiculous output mod to jack the output up for solos, and probably 4-5 of those heads so I can survive playing gigs as often as I do without a failure (and at least 3 at a gig ready to be swapped on the fly). I'd probably also add a compressor to my rig to add more gain to the single coil guitars (Mustang, Tele, etc...). They would all be running through cheap-ass homebrew 4X12's built out of lumber from the lumber yard, and yes, the Kurt Cobain claimed "Radio Shack" speakers.
