Away for a month and still hunting for a small amp.

It's been about a month since my last post and it's not really laziness that prompted this extended break from the bloggin'. In the time since I last posted, I played a whack of gigs, exchanged my new Marshall Class 5 (not enough volume to be useful in a lot of gigging situations) for a Traynor YCM-20 (which I'm about to return as well - the reverb feeds back on the lead channel and the amp is generally uninspiring), seen Mike Stern and Bill Frisell live in clubs and have generally had my hands full with a variety of time-consuming musical projects.
Mike Stern was especially inspiring.  I had never seen him play before, but I have been aware of him since the 80s, when he played in one of Miles Davis' late bands. My impression is that he just plays what he wants and doesn't worry too much about putting a label on what he does, or fitting in to current fashions.  He's really a classic fusion player, with a constant outpouring of ideas, beautiful phrasing, and a quite nice tone from a Yamaha Pacifica, a stereo solid-state amp setup including a Pearce amp (no longer available but I coveted one at the Guitar Clinic in Hamilton back in the day) and an old Yamaha amp that I can't identify, along with the 'doubling' effect on the old Yamaha SPX-90 digital effects unit (which comes out sounding a lot like chorus).
That Mike Stern was able to coax such lovely sounds out of solid-state gear has got me re-evaluating my fealty to tube amps. I just don't seem to be able to find a usable small tube amp in the price range that I'm working in. I'm looking at the ZT Club 12, which is a digital amp that weighs 22 pounds and puts out 200 watts. My good friend and musical partner Alec Fraser just switched to digital for his bass amp, and I have to say that he is achieving a convincing SVT tone with the tiniest of high-powered amp heads. I'll probably do the exchange tomorrow and report back.
Oh, and I still have my Strat. Long story involving Eric Clapton. Another time.