well I have had several heads to date and I can tell you from having them both that the laney pl 50 is the way to go. The marshall valvestates are really over priced and not worth the trouble. not that marshall makes crap just that when you play out specially in colder weather you tend to eat up tubes like mad making the valvestates not much of a bargan. one year alone I spent almost 300 bucks in bubes for my valvestate just due to tubes breaking in bad weather. Just some advice… Go with the PL-50 : The first one is a 10 year-old Laney Pro-Linebacker with 2 channels, one 12" speaker, 50 watt and integrated reverb. I believe there’s a transistor preamp in it. I payed about 100 $ for it. : The other one is the well-known Marshall Valvestate 8040, also with 2 channels, one 12" speaker and reverb but with 40 watt and a tube preamp. That thing cost me about 200 bucks. : Well, I personally think the Marshall is the better choice, of course, but there could probably also be anyone who could tell me that I’m wrong. I play a Strat-copy with a Seymour Duncan Hot-Rail-Humbucker at the bridge. Which combo provides me a pretty "hard", cool sound (I’d use it for heavyer rock music) but also high and clean sustain (for soli)? Is there a huge difference between the maximum volume of a 40W- and a 50W-amp or does Marshall’s "quality"-production make this backwardness good? Are there hearable differences between the transistor- and the tube-preamp? Are the Marshall-combo’s probable advantages worthy 100 dollars? : I’d welcome answers by experienced guys who know what they’re talking about 😉 : Thank you and please excuse my broken English…I’m German *g* : see you

Judging from the date of your post, this may be a little late. I’d stick with the Marshall. Marshalls have a great clean channel, and have more "bang" per wattage than most other amps I’ve used. I would also highly doubt the 10 watt difference is going to matter much.