I am an at home bedroom player, but I will occasionally play with my uncles band (they play mostly popular rock n roll from the 1950s and 1960s cover songs). The lead guitarist/singer is phenomenal on the guitar and when we trade solos between himself, me, and the other acoustic guitarist, he just rocks out and has an awesome tone coming out of his amp and I think the sound also gets picked up from the microphones/pa system in the room making it just sound really fat (some songs are clean tones just boosted a bit to have more sustain and volume, some songs he kicks in some overdrive/distortion/dirt), then when he points to me to take a solo, my amp sounds weak and thin always even though I used several good amps (victoria 45410, deluxe reverb reissue, and dr. z z-28....I haven't yet used my vox ac30hw2x)...however, I am never able to turn the volume up past 2 or 3 on these amps, which gives me a clean tone, but then I have to throw overdrive pedals in front of my amps such as the OCD or Paisley, and then I like to bring a delay pedal as well...However, its a pain in the ass to bring these things and still sound pretty shitty. My overdrive always sounds harsh and awkward for the music we are playing. He plays out of a $250 Crate Amp and a Korg Ax150g pedal with a Peavy Wolfgang guitar, and sounds so much better than my rigs that cost so much more money (I have brought American Made Strats, Telecasters, Les Paul, and a handmade Strat). Its always slightly embarrasing carrying all this stuff into the basement, hooking up all the cables, and not having a good tone (we don't really spend time trying to find me a good tone either, its really just plug everything and start playing).
I am looking for something more easy to transport, hook up, and have a variety of tones immediately that sound good. I bought a KEMPER POWERHEAD and one ATOMIC CLR NEO Active Wedge, and I have only been playing them at home at low volumes. I haven't worked up the nerve to bring the kemper and neo wedge to play with them, because I am not so sure how easy it would be to find good tones at a good volume, and if it will sound good, so I just keep bringing my regular amps.
What are you thoughts on this situation?...And do you have any profiles I could download and know that they would sound good for that kind of music at a volume high enough for a light drummer in a large finished basement type environment....I don't want to be tweaking knobs during songs....