Thanks Eric - That pedal your bandmate built sounds great too. I did guess that solid state pedals could not sound as good as real tubes, but I'm trying to get a ball-park 5150 sound without shelling out £500+ on a used 5150 combo (cheapest I've seen so far on ebay).
I wonder whether anyone has made similar pedals with real tubes in them (if that's even possible)? I guess they'd be a lot more expensive - cannot find anything like this through google :(
Oh well, I guess it is back to saving...