first amp build - choice of pre-amp and some questions

[incurably_optimistic]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post so i guess i should introduce myself - I've been making guitar pedals for quite some time but I never worked with amplifiers, so now is the perfect time to change it I guess! I know there are better places to ask these questions about amps as this is a stompbox forum, but I've been reading this board for too long to look for my answers somewhere else, and besides I know there are a lot of really knowledgable posters here who know all the answers i need.
And please excuse me for my poor english as I'm from Poland so I apologize in advance for all my mistakes.

I want to build myself a guitar amplifier. As a first project I would have chosen something small, quiet and simple, but I already have a small 8W amp to play at home, so I thought that maybe I could make myself a practice amp loud enough to play in a band setting? I did some searching and googling and it turned out that a LM3886 chip would be perfect as a power-amp section to get something around 50-60W into 8ohm speaker (but please correct me if it's an overkill or wrong on some other level).

I've had an old & broken solid-state amp laying in the basement, so I disassembled it, threw out the board (after salvaging some parts like 2200uF capacitors or LM1875 chip) and now have myself a nice chassis and neatly wired AC section of the amp. Unfortunately, the transformer included in the amp is not powerful enough for me to use it - it only gives +-17V AC and has a max rating of 45VA, so I'll take it out and use it for some other project.

But back to the topic - now that I've decided on using the LM3886 chip as a power section (I've read that it's loud and clean and that's all that you want from the power section of an amp, right? oh, and it has protection from overheating) I have to choose a preamp to go with it, but I don't really have too much knowledge in this area, so I would like to ask you:

what are the good sounding and simple (as this is my first build it's kind of important) pre-amps to use with a lm3886 power-amp? I was thinking maybe of some low-voltage (or maybe high-voltage?) tube pre-amp - I've never owned a tube-amp so this is kind of a dream of mine, but if there are some great solid-state preamps out there I'm open to suggestions!

I would like it to have a clean and distorted channel, as well as some simple tone control (low, mid and high frequncy controls).

I also have an accutronics spring reverb tank taken from some broken amp that I would also like to throw in there.

For example, I found this project - http://pdfelectronics.com/the-hood-preamp/ and it looks nice for me, but what the hell do i know - what do you think about this one?

Let's say I decided to build the preamp from the link above - can I use the same power supply for the power section and the pre-amp section or should I use two separate transformers? I honestly have no idea about power consumption of vacuum tubes so I'm just guessing here, but a 120VA transformer should be enough for a 50W power section and pre-amp right?

Sorry for this long post and thanks in advance for all the answers!

[incurably_optimistic]

Sorry for bumping my own thread, but I found a schematic for a preamp based on the Fender Twin Reverb amp and it looks really simple and, more importantly, it uses two cheap transformers (one is 12v*0,25A=3W and the second is 12*0,15=1,8W).
Here's the link: http://s198.photobucket.com/user/birdy81260/media/Fender.gif.html
I was thinking about designing the power supply for the whole amp - does it make more sense to use separate power supplies for the preamp (as it uses two small power 230v-12v transformers) and the power amp (bipolar 230Vac primary +-24Vac secondary, power>100VA) or should i use this big transformer to get the +-24Vac needed for the LM3886 and then another transformer to crank up the voltage to 300Vdc for the tubes?

I also have a 600ohm accutronics reverb tank taken out from a broken fender amp that I would like to include in this amp, is this preamp powerful enough to drive the tank? If so, then i think i should use some kind of recovery stage, should a single op-amp operating on, say, +-20v be enough for this?