My mate has an FM65R and, cranked up, the reverb is anything but subtle. Could be you've had a spring come adrift.

Interesting rig. Reminds me of Dave Davies's rig from the early Kinks days, with his little practice amp overdriving something more powerful.

Playing a bass through a guitar amp is unlikely to damage it. The usual problem is the possibility of damaging the speakers. Symmetrical clipping does not introduce any DC component, and anyway, there is usually a big output capacitor to filter it out.

Modern guitar speakers are much more robust than they used to be. 30 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of playing a bass guitar through 10" speakers. Playing a guitar through a bass amp is a completely different bucket of prunes - I always used to play my guitar and bass through a general-purpose SS amp with a 15" bass speaker in a big bass-reflex cabinet. Great tone. I've recently purchased a new 15" PA cabinet to re-visit that tone.

The 'Valvetronix' series are not your run-of-the-mill amplifiers. They combine a single-valve pre-amp stage with a solid-state output stage, and then feed back and process the output signal to emulate the effect of a valve amp output transformer, plus they have a range of excellent digital amp emulations.

The complexity of the output stage means that modifications are virtually impossible on a DIY basis. If you just want more power, you'd do best to trade-in your 50W model for a 100W - and it won't sound much louder. The amp as it stands has a number of high-gain emulations, and I doubt that you'll be able to improve on them significantly. But you can try.

Buzzcocks, one word. Originally founded by Malcolm McLaren as support for the Sex Pistols, released the first independent UK single, had several hits. Reformed a few years ago.

The Buzzcocks used HH IC-120 amps. Dunno if they still do.

I got the bargain of a lunchtime at the London Guitar Show. A brand-new complete Fender Frontman 15 chassis (uncased) for £25. This uses a TDA2050 for 15W output, but I'm sorely tempted to disable the power amp section and use the pre-amp to drive the Velleman 100W kit I bought a few months ago. Box it up neatly with a 12" 100W speaker and scare the s**t out of my friends.

David Gedge of The Wedding Present has always used HH VS Musician solid-state amps. I have one, so I can appreciate his choice!

Woah, hang on there. The 'Deacy' was built by John Deacon, Queen's bass player, from a junk germanium transistor amplifier of unknown origin (possibly an old car radio). Brian May used it as a studio amplifier, miked up. It was hardly a stage amp! Almost certainly less than one watt, the exact circuit is not public domain.