I am fairly new to guitar but I have found out something quite spectatular. I have 2 amps. A peavey 65 "Bandit", and a DOD 60 watt "Juice it". I thought the DOD was the bomb. I bought it because the Peavey had very dirty pots. One day I cleaned the pots on the Peavey (very difficult). It sounded better than the DOD.

Here's the deal. I bought a cheap digitech rp50 processor for fun, then discovered that my old Peavey (not the DOD) has a "power amp input" provision in the back. Plug the rp50 into this (bypassing the pots) and "voila" killer sound quality that makes me sound like friggin pro. No more amp hiss and over sensitive strings that make noise when you don't want them to. I can't overstate how important good sound quality is. I can't stop playing! The only drawback is it won't get as loud this way, but plenty loud for me.