Yeah, I know - finally getting back to the forum.
Full disclosure - I didn't run through everything on the amp like I normally would for a test drive. I was a tad distracted. It was not running through the MT cab, just a Mesa Boogie 1x12.
The bulk of the time was spent on the clean channel. Given the environment, I'm a little hesitant to declare it equal to the Archon, but I will not say it's inferior. There was nothing lacking there to my ears, but it was a little noisy to hear everything. I would have liked to run through the range of the gain on this channel, but it didn't happen. That said, it was clear, and it had excellent clarity across all the notes in the chords we were playing. The bright switch might be a tad more pronounced than the Archon.
I did get a chance to play with the lead channel a bit more. I dialed the gain up to around 2-3 o'clock, and with the guitar's volume full-on, it was glorious. Full-voiced, loud (actually, for a 15-watter...well, more in a sec). Responsive? Oh yeah - I dialed the guitar (this was the Silver Sky) down to about six. Cleaned up nicely. Not clean by any stretch, but nowhere near the devastation as when it was full up. Then I dialed the guitar down to two. Whoa. Not quite clean, but you could see clean from there. I'm guessing if the gain was around noon, it would have been pretty close to clean. Much more of a classic rock level of gain. And that's just adjusting the guitar volume. Very impressive.
So, the volume. I'm not the guy who's going to go into a store and crank things up to 11. I'm not sure if I'm respectful or just self-conscious, but I don't do that. I may crank it up for a short period if I really need to test something at a louder volume, but not for very long. The amp was on the clean channel when we started playing, and at a nice volume - loud enough to hear, even if you couldn't hear every nuance with the stuff around us, but not so loud that it would annoy someone in the store. When I switched to the lead channel, the amp was not really loud - not what I'd call stage volume, but not quiet. Louder than I was comfortable in a store situation. So I reached over to turn the master volume on the channel down. It was maybe around 8 o'clock. I was not expecting that. The clean channel was not much higher than that, if it was. So it looks like volume will not be an issue with this one!
This is going to be a good one.