Of those amps, the only one I have used is the Fender FM212R.
As far as I know, it is pretty much as reliable as you could get. The one I played on belongs to a music school and has been used and abused not only by guitar teachers and their students, but also by bands who signed a contract for using the music school rehearsal room. I recently someone play bass guitar on this (far from recommanded), and I know this thing has served to amplify voice, keyboards, etc... for years without any problem. Its clean chanel is pretty good once understood the right amount of tone knob on the guitar and EQ settings on the amp and its output volume is more than enough to gig.
The drive chanel can sound decent, but you will probably want to stay away of the "more drive" switch. So consider a good overdrive/distortion stompox to complement it if you need overdriven tones.
Overall and with the exception of high gain settings (more drive + a lot of gain), It is pretty respectfull of the character of your guitar and playing style and does react to playing dynamics, volume and tone knobs variations. But even for rehearsing with 2 drumers I like my Peavey Envoy 110 (40W, single 10' speaker) far better than this one, especially if I put an EQ in front of the Peavey.
In case of problems, a FM212R is on the "don't repair" list for Fender dealers, so if it brakes under waranty they will simply give you another one. When not under waranty, depending on who you speak to, they might not want to spend time on it, although it is pretty simple and as such not that hard to fix (just not economically realistic).


DSP based units such as the mustang IV are, guess what? DSP based. This is a completely different world. When testing them, you should be carefull to test how it reacts to playing dynamics, guitar knobs and pickup configuration, because that's the main weak point of entry-level DSP based units.
If they brake, they won't be repaired and that's not just an economicall decision. Repairing the DSP part is just not feasible by a regular tech. Repairing the power amp, powerinput or jack connectors usually are, but that's pretty much all about it.

My preference goes to analogic SS amps. If you search a good used one, my recommandation would be to seek Tech21 TM120 (discontinued and maybe a bit complicated preamp, but built like a tank and very good sounding - have one myself, which costed me 290€ used, and really like it, especially for live usage thanks to the 3 independant preamps it features and wonderfull tones you can get from it), Peavey Bandit (also on the advanced-circuitry side of the SS type and would require a 12' additional cab to be turned into a 2x12, but steal analog and sounding great). I've also heard good things about Hiwatt Maxwatt 100's and Randalls.

Another option would be to buy a FM212R anyway as it may be the cheapest 100W poweramp with 2 12' speaker you can find, begin with it and if you feel you need something different tonally, you just have to focus on the preamp part (some good analog preamps are available on the market for just a handfull of $ more than a distortion stompbox) and maybe the speakers, but that's not even sure you'll need a change here.

Oh, and if you go to a music store, prepare for the vendor not understanding you, cause they usually are not aware that you can sound good with SS gear too...

Prior to answer questions 1 and 2, you may want to have your speaker ohm ratting question answered.
Basically, SS amps are not as selective as Tube amps in this regards. Usually any 8ohm load will do, but you can be pretty safe with 16 also.

I agree that tone focus is key for the following reason:
- high order harmonics do sound bad, and some of them are even not hamonically correct (especially those from 7x fundamental frequency and higher). Filtering them out both before and after clipping is a good idea, especially after heavy clipping (square wave signals contain a lot of them). Before clipping they usually are a lot less prominent due to the natural behaviour of a guitar.
- when playing several notes (chords, double stops, etc), you will generate some intermodulation distortion, which is not bad in powerchords (the only case where the intermodulation actually adds harmonically related frequencies), but will be dissonant for most other intervals. The more clipping, the more intermodulation. You can filter some of it with low end filtering after clipping but the best way to limit that is to reduce the bandwidth before clipping, especially lowest end, cause you want to avoid clipped-generated harmonics of the lowest notes of your chord with the same amplitude as the fondamental of higher notes of your chord (especially considering a major third will be generated as the 5th harmonic... not that good in a minor chord...).
- highs ride on lows. Clipping apply to the overall signal. So your highs will be asymetrically clipped (here comes the south after even harmonics) with a modulation of this clipping. To me it sounds quite good, but applies only when a) your clipping device sees some harmonics that are there already b) you do not squash them by changing the whole thing into a square wave anyway (ie clipping the lows so hard you don't even let any room to still have the original highs in the signal). So this applies more in the region between clean with a bit of warmth and slight crunch.

It seems your device uses just these concepts, and it sounds good, so you must be doing something right. What I'm more interested in these days is the last of the conceptual aspects I detailed above. Accoustically, an electric guitar will have a lot of harmonics, but with a lot less amplitude than the fondamental and first octave. Put some low input impedance stompboxes and a long guitar cable with capacitance problems after a passive pickup and you have very few harmonics to enhance your "warmer clean" tone.

Thanks for the answer.
Rest assured I do think I have more to learn from you than you from me. 
Interesting point you have... and presented like this I fully agree with it: I do think as a general rule high Q band cutting is often better than high Q boosting.

But:
My preamps setting are often around the onset of clipping and as a consequence I try to maintain the other rule of thumb in my thinkings: Every filtering before the preamp (or first clipping stage) serves only the purpose of shaping the response of the clipping. Predicting how this will affect the clipping is very difficult as highs ride on lows (the assumption that pretend we can treat each frequency separatedly when thinking about it is an over simplification that might not work very good). Currently, even if this oversimplification works a bit to grasp the concept, it doesn't replace to me fiddling with any possibility before the clipping stage and hearing what happens. And my hears tell me both my guitars sound better (especially for clean to moderately overdriven tones) when buffered at a 3Mohm input than straight into the amp (which are more like 1Mohm if I remember correctly).

Well, as you say, I still got a lot to learn, and I really appreciate your views on this. Confronting different views does help learning things.

http://www.till.com/articles/PreampCable/

'tho I'd be more inclined towards a Source follower, but the thing is, presented with a very high Z the natural pickup resonance isn't damped and this makes it sound richer, this...

That's what a good buffer is made for: present a very Z to the pickup while feeding the following circuitry with a more manageable low impedence signal.

Edit: Actually typed too fast, as in "before reading your (very informative) link". Anyway, I do think a good buffer at the input of the phabb zone will do exactly that, provided the first guitar cord and contacts are of very good quality.


Nice sound clip by the way.

To be heard, bass notes have to be at a considerably higher power. That's why the average bass player uses an amp 5times more powerfull than the guitarists he plays with.
They also generate a higher signal amplitude, which might push the speaker into its excursion limits. That's the main concern when plugging a bass guitar into a guitar amp. If it's just for training at home, you can get away with cutting a lot the bass bands of the amp's tone stack to prevent damage and avoid playing too loud.
Another one is that depending on the circuitry, your amp itself can enter into occillation if driven hard with frequencies lower than what it is designed for.

On another hand, a fairly high number of guitarists do plug a looper stompbox with integrated rythm box in it into their guitar amps without any troubles. These rythms sometimes contains very low frequencies (but they are recorded and compressed, which is a different matter than an uncontrolled live instrument.

I happen to be the happy owner of another Envoy 110 from 1995.
Although I recently bought a Tech21 Trademark 120 which is even greater for my band, I still use the Peavey when I don't want to carry the big stuff, and when I want to amplify my retro-fitted passive piezzo nylon accoustic.
With the stock speaker, it has a great transparent clean chanel.
From my experience, this amp benefits a lot from pre-EQing/clean boosting/buffering (any pedal format EQ will perform these 3 functions at the same time if you place them between the guitar and the amp as you're forced to do anyway with the Peavey that doesn't have an effect loop).