Guitar Nerds Anonymous

I'm not really sure what I'm after now. I don't really want to spend crazy money and have been looking at stuff up to about £8-900 which is the top of my budget. I guess part of the issue is that I don't really know what i'll be doing with it yet. Probably some sort of mainly clean rock n roll, surf, soul type pickin', but I want headroom to be able to step on a fuzz and go into garage psych rock territory. If I want living room volume or exploding amp type sounds when cranked I already have a practice amp and an OG SF Champ already so I'm guessing the wattage I'm after would be between 15 minimum and 40 tops. I want to be able to keep up with a drummer without farting out so I think maybe an AC15 or Princeton might be a little underpowered.

I was never a huge fan of Fender amps, my background was always Marshalls and Oranges and Matamps and the like, amps which start out dirty and get dirtier, total riff / noise machines. But when I picked up a Fender Hot Rod III 40w I was really sold on it. I bought it as a dirty surf amp, and it isn't that - the spring reverb on board is really rich and smooth, no ugly 'doink' on it at all - but what it is is a brilliant sounding pedal platform. Every pedal I put through it, from dirty compressors to springy reverbs to pristine delays to horrific fuzzes just sounded brilliant. (The dirty channel is not worth bothering with, but the clean is lovely.)

It's arguable if you'd consider it to be part of the Fender 'history' - it's not a very characterful amp - but if I were going to have just one amp to do everything I do, that'd be the one. It's a proper swiss army knife. I'm actually on the lookout for one at the moment, just keeping my eye out for a bargain. You can pick them up for £300-£350 if you're quick.