Hey Richard,
It's not about the power, it's about the tone!
I had this conversation with the techs at ADA many years ago when they were up and running, and at the top of their game, and that was about why the older amps sounded so good. In the older amplifier designs, they built these great preamp circuits, that produced a strong signal. So much so, that if you turned up the preamp past a certain point, it would overload the input of the power amp section. This produced distortion as we all know, the technical definition of distortion for audio electronics is: the sound of circuitry in distress.
So what we are doing with our gear is producing the distortion in the preamp, and trying to amplify that as cleanly as possible. That isn't what I want to do. That's why I'm looking at how other members here evaluate their setups with different power amps. Are they getting more of that natural response from the poweramp that they use? Does it sound more like a natural guitar amp rather than a digital simulation?
You see, I believe the ADA preamps have a strong enough signal. Now, it's a matter of finding out if the non-ADA poweramps get this old school reaction from them.
I'm intrigued with MJMP's suggestion of the Marshall 9005, and this is because I am very familiar with the JCM800 series tone. It's a good one. That's a reference I can relate to. I'm very particular about the amplifiers I like, and there aren't that many.
For my clean tones, I like the old Fender amps, nothing can beat them. Marshall amps have a nice clean tone but different. But the true reaction from an amplifier that catches my attention, is when I plug my Stratocaster (stock), into it and turn up the guitar volume, and it begins to feedback in a musical way before I even start playing it. This tells me I have the right amp for my guitar! I've only experienced this with Fender, Marshall, Soldano, and ADA when plugged into certain poweramps and speakers.
That's where I'm going with this rig.
Harley