I am still baffled as to why orange dicoed the Rocker 30. The clean channel was a bit dark with a Gibson for my taste, but the whole amp was solid sounding and easy to dial in. Less brutal than the rockerverbs and its cool to hear cathode biased EL34s in a modern, non-boutique design. What made you switch over to the dual dark?

Tbh, I wanted to upgrade to a stand-alone head with a 4x12. And the dual dark was unmatched in power and grit. I started playing heavier music (also bigger venues) and the dual dark caters to those tones, however it also has the versatility to get really nice clean tones. I still own both, I just gig with the Dual Dark now instead. But I do agree that the Rocker 30 is a GREAT sounding amp. I was very pleased with what I could do with it. And I still use it as a practice amp on the reg.

how many seats (hypothetical seats if its standing room only) are you playing these days that 30 to 40 watts won't cover you? I always found 50 to 100 watts thru efficient celestions was a bit much for 500 seats or less, not that it stopped me from letting the plexi I toured with rip at full tilt any time I found a sound man who would tolerate it.

Oh it's not that it couldn't handle it! It absolutely could, I just prefer a 4x12 with stand-alone head vs 2 112s stacked at this point; better bottom end and sound displacement with the slant. The tone is honestly the differentiating factor for me more-so than volume. You're usually mic-ed regardless of venue size. But we've played in fairly large venues (up to 500-1000 cap max). The good part about the dual dark is that you can set the wattage too. It's versatile in that sense, which is nice.

I like that about my current AC30 and matchless. I use the 1/2 power a lot in small venues so I can throttle the shit out of the power sections. But I know I have 15+ more watts on tap if I wanna get some serious stage volume at a big venue or if I want a bone clean tone (yeah right).

my worry was always having a good amount of stage volume to play the amp without blasting out the back of the room so that the sound guy would bitch or mute my mic channels at the mixer. And yeah, a 4x12 does help, especially a big mesa recto model or a Marshall TV cab or model 1980 like I used to favor before I gauged down a bit.

Hell yea. The 4x12 recto that I have is exactly what I was looking for. It works perfectly. And I checked out the AC30 too, that's some good shit.

The Vox AC30 and Matchless C30 helped me get over 100 watt superleads. I am getting way too old to tame those beasts... or to lug one or 2 of them with a bunch of 4x12s around w/o roadies!

The dual dark is very much a high gain Arbiter era ac30, isn't it? I wanna say its 4 cathode biased EL84/6BQ5s, solid state diode bridge rectifier for a few extra watts and more punch stapled to a 2 channel switchable preamp with more gain than a dual terror, 15 watt mode, etc? The whole terror series looks very voxy on paper. More voxy than WEM dominator/Marshall 18&20 watt type EL84 circuit....