I hear you on that. I sold my Marshall Class 5 because, even with the speaker plugged into the headphone jack, it was just way too loud when cranked far enough to get decent tone. As I said earlier, something like a Yamaha THR10 is probably a good bet, but I'd consider trying a whole load of cheap overdrive pedals first and just flipping them on eBay if nothing works for you. I think there's also an attenuator pedal that you can put in your effects loop if you have one.
Alternatively the Blackstar HT1 looks ace. I think @Sparky has one that he rates.
As a follow up to this, the job has given us all Amazon vouchers to say thanks for the hard work this year, which would halve the cost of a positive spark grid - is it really that much better than say a Roland micro cube or even a small orange/vox/Marshall?
I hear you on that. I sold my Marshall Class 5 because, even with the speaker plugged into the headphone jack, it was just way too loud when cranked far enough to get decent tone. As I said earlier, something like a Yamaha THR10 is probably a good bet, but I'd consider trying a whole load of cheap overdrive pedals first and just flipping them on eBay if nothing works for you. I think there's also an attenuator pedal that you can put in your effects loop if you have one.
Alternatively the Blackstar HT1 looks ace. I think @Sparky has one that he rates.