DSL 40cr vs JVM205

all marshalls made after the JCM900 series are maintenance nightmares, the switching circuits and tube sockets are particular failure points.... if you're not gigging and rehearsing regularly either will be okay for some time for non-travel... if you're planning to gig then look at a less complicated marshall or higher end channel switching amplifier (that does not eman a mesa, those are even less reliable)...

I've had my eye on Friedman amps for a while now. I haven't been able to get my hands on one yet, but they come highly recommended, and the reviews are really good online. In particular, the JJ Junior might be what you're looking for. It has two channels like their Runt 20, but it also has a switch called the JBE to get even more gain. You should be able to play some heavy stuff, and the amp works well with pedals, so you can put even more drives if you're looking to get really heavy. Even though it is only a 20 Watt amp, they say it is definitely loud enough for gigging. This is based off of their 100W Jerry Cantrell amp if you want to go that route as well, if you don't trust 20W.

I'm going to have to recommend soldano although his more metal amps aren't typically smallish, but the build quality is there... friedman is another excellent choice. Cornford. This is a get what you pay for situation. Any 2 channel gain banger with roadworthy construction will cost a lot more than the marshall options, they reserve robust build quality for the reissues these days and also charge considerably more for them. PCB mounted tube sockets and ribbon connectors are a bad bet for tube amps that move around regularly. I had a bandmate with a DSL50 and shared rehearsal space with an endorsee who used the big TSL100. We all htit the road. Those JCM2000 heads were unreliable. The bandmate frequently had his in the shop and would need to borrow our neighbors JCM900 while the guy from the other band was just allowed to swap his broken head for new one at any large, authorized marshall dealer as part of his deal. Yes marshall made him pay for the head in the 1st place as is there custom but he got that perk of a free swapout in nay major city. On the other hand, my ancient suoperlead never went down. I never had cause to use my backups unless it was in for a routine rebias back when i didn't do that sort of thing myself. I also owned an ancient KCM800 that was a real road warrior. They made 50 watt combos, I would seek out one of those if you must go small. The channel switcher is nothing to write home about on the clean channel but its good enough for tom morello nd will never, ever break. Beyond that maybe a 900 dual reverb combo? Then there's boutique like soldano, friedman, cornford, bogner etc

oh yeah, the 90s Laney amps thata re just modded 800s like the GH, VH and Iommi models are fairly robust, not as road tough as an 800 but not as finnicky and delicate as a dsl/tsl 2000... I've seen the 3 channel one go down on someone but never had a problem with the single channel with boost models I had. The most metal version would be the tonny iommi signature which he still uses to this day. Of course I don't think it comes in less than 100 watts so a GH50L in a combo might be your best bet. It really depends what era of metal you're after... you get to thrash and the mesas start coming in for a lot of guys as do the preamp/poweramp setups and then all these death emtal guys were using solid state and the blackmetal thing is like those god awful valvestates, right?.... you just gotta figure out what you want. Marshall's last great amp in my book was the silver jubilee and the 900 series was kinda a pale imitation with more bells and whistles, since then they've just been designing junk and maintianing their rep on the reissues.

if I needed to do anything with heavy gain and reasonable clean tone from the same amp without using a distortion pedal I would be looking to buy another soldano hot rod 50+. The clean have a smidge of hair to them, the whole gain range of the dirty channel is hyper useable. Amp cuts, sounds more british than the SLO100 (also excellent), is indestructible and easy to service... You can really balance some great tones one a hot rod series Soldano, Im not a switcher guy but this is the only channel switching amp I've ever regretted selling. It was a joy to play. Very modern if you want but capable of very old school hard rock and early emtal tones too. Its the closest I've ever come to getting hiwatt clean to crunch tones and cranked marshall tones from one amp without building something myself.