Vox Pathfinder Mods?

[Rob Denton]

Just used some spare change to buy a 15 Watt Vox Pathfinder. Great amp for the price. Certainly got my money's worth. I wanted an amp that I could unabashedly ravage without worrying about the consequences. Cheapest and easiest mod was to slap a 3/4" piece of pine on the back to close it up and give it some warm and compressed-sounding bass. Swapped the 4558s out for 5532s but that didn't help the noise floor problem much. I want to clean up the final output and smooth the transition from hot -to-not; or balls-to-the-wall vs nothing-at-all, or simply round off the curve before clipping. Yes, I know this isn't a tube amp. Any ideas?