I love this amp. It's the best I've ever played. The next purchase will most likely be a Lonestar Special, for practicing at home. Been working on getting the right tone for a while. It takes a little effort. The more I get into blues the more I back off the gain, just adding enough grit to add some excitement to the tone, and keep the clarity of the notes, and the timbre of the guitar. The guitar is a 1996 Lonestar, I keep the pickup selector almost always in position 4. Love the Texas Special pickups in this guitar. It's kind of ironic that my 2 favorite pieces of gear (the guitar and the amp) are both called "Lonestar".
I just re-tubed it and I'm very happy with the tone. Got the tubes from Doug's Tubes online (http://www.dougstubes.com), highly recommend getting tubes there. Check out his Amp Kits for the cool tube combinations
Here are my current amp settings:
Both channels are set to 50 watts in this photo, for jamming at home. With my band I switch both channels to 100 watts. I almost always keep it on Tweed power though.
Effects loop is disengaged (hard bypass) for practicing at home. To my ears its the cleanest tone. With my band I engage the effects loop to take advantage of the Solo boost.
