Hi Hunter :)
I've listed back to quite a few of your YouTube clips today and I STILL think your best tones came from the Shiva. I guess my vintage Marshall tastes still overrule all the more modern amps you've got/had.
Have you ever tried a Soldano SLO? I think they'd be right up your street, and a bit more like the Shiva in lower mid growl?
Shiva was nice but what really bugged me was that the clean channel couldn't be got to break up nicely and the drive sound was not capable of 80s hair metal, just lacking the upper mids. Plus the loop sucked tone.
I am thinking that maybe the 20th Anniversary Shiva might be more up my alley.
The SLO is great, but the loop is awful. And it's not very versatile in that it has that upper mids pronouncation that is just there and can't be dialed out. It could probably do it all for me, but only in a W/D rig, not on its own because of that tone sucking wrongly constructed loop. I heard there is a mod by John Suhr to make the loop good though.
I need a tone machine that can cover ultra clean to ultra high gain and all in between with ease and support some kind of programmability. The Shiva wasn't that unfortunately. And I prefer amp drive over using pedals to get there anyday.
