rolling stones -type distortion

[Bernardduur]

Twins

[petemoore]

  This probably isn't the order your availability/finances tends to dictate, but what the 'early' entries had as priority to guitar tone.
  Speaker or Guitar to start with, both have a great deal to do with tone, either one is a great place to start since they are at the ends of the chain.
  since you probably have a guitar, and know about pickup types and qualities...
  speakers
  I'm not sure what they had exactly, but modern great speakers is a great recommended starting point. Get a blue one or a TT, or weber or...something that decidely falls into the 'upgrade' category.
  If you are not familiar with low wattage speakers [mine are all under 25w, I read 50 watters sound alot like this], here's how I'd briefly describe...sensative, responsive, able to get as loud as a 12'' speaker can and still sound great.
  The last bit of those brief over-generalizations is important to choosing the tube amp, which is the next task.
  figure out how many...[12's?] you'll need, to sound great, they need to be 'in the sweet zone' volume wise, pushed too hard or not hard enough and they sound 'different', basically they should just sound 'pretty loud' for a 12''.
  3pc. band and you'll probably want/need 2x12'', 4pc. loud band...depending on how loud you may need to double everything.
  Doubling the setup insures that mostly volume is what changes..ie plug a small amp into a big cab and it'll sound louder and different, same thing with a bigger amp into the 2x12''.
  If you are playing clubs, having a Mick Taylor exact amp replica would kill everything else in the mix with MT type settings, super loud. You can't get exactly 'that' in a club to work right, but with a scaled down version you can get...I think... as close to that as is possible.
  So then you have say a 2x12''s cabinet with really nice speakers, what size amp [wattage output] will you need to get a load on the output, scaled to near what MT had going on with the full sized version? I don't know right off, probably between 22w and 40w..what kind of tubes? I don't remember what the V4 had.
  That ^ is the long way around, and is probably not worth the effort, just buying a qualite tube amp which is 'in the ballpark' as far as tone/type and scaling, then tweeking a booster/OD to get the rest of the way there makes good sense, doing speaker/tube upgrades..stuff like that..should be able to get you a very high quality tone, similar at least...'close' and 'how close' is hard to say, what I heard from these guys guitar tones had been mixed, vynil-ized, and played back through various high quality stereo systems...

[WGTP]

Those were the days.  The V-4/VT-22 have active boost/cut bass, treble and mid-range controls and the mid had a switch to change from 500Hz, 800Hz or 3000Hz.  IIRC the "honk" came from cranking the 800Hz up a bit.  The real glassy tones you hear at times is the 3000Hz setting and for the really deap chunk, the 500Hz.  Can't You Hear Me... may be the neck pickup with the 500Hz or 800Hz setting.  There is a bright switch also and a 3 position "sensitivity" switch.  The VT-40 was a 60 watt version with 4-10's.  Supposedly, you could replace the output tubes with 6550's if it wasn't loud enought.  Cool stuff.  Too loud for most places, except the "Red Dog Saloon".   

[petemoore]

  Nice when new.
  Pretty cool switching options.
  Switches were becoming a bit glitchy, the whole thing was becoming a klunker...and there were rows of upright boards, caps all over, lotsa this's and that's going on, would have been a real chore to re-work, a bit over the top in that respect.