My Vox rig, depending on the gig venue, is either my Vox AC30CC2 (71lbs!), or one of my Vox AC15C1 amps, about 51 pounds. I gig with 2 rigs because we cover a huge number of bands. It isn't the most recorded amplifier in history for no reason. If you can find a hand wired BFDR used That is a great amp and with the right effects pedals can do any genre. The Vox AC15HW1X Hand wired 1X12 with a Celestion Blue speaker is a great amp and can be had with monthly payments on several web seller sites. Then you can check out lots of cheap amps to see if that is what you really want to buy or if you want to save up more money. I hear you saying you don't want to spend a lot of money but you owe it to yourself to play some real quality hand built amplifiers so you know what quality sounds like.
VOX AC30CC2 TUBE LAYOUT PC
Control pots and input jacks mounted to the PC board, wires bundled which should be separated, cheap crap Chinese components and a layout that makes it almost impossible to work on the amp. The same goes for the two Fender Amps you mentioned. There were so many nasty audible artifacts in the reissue next to the pure clean tone of the original layout and construction it was grating. The horrible things the modern Fender company did to Leo's work of art Bassman build of that circuit were sinful. One of the most revealing A/B comparisons I have ever witnessed was when I built a Fender 5F6-A Tweed Bassman for a player who had been playing a Fender Reissue of that same amp. The amps I would suggest would be a hand wired Fender Blackface Deluxe Reverb (BFDR) and A hand wired Vox AC 15. That being said, you owe it to yourself to go play some hand wired turret or eyelet board non PCB tube amplifiers so you can hear the sonic purity of guitar tone without such audible artifacts. I know you only want to spend $500 so you are probably locked into a mass production PCB type amp with those audible short comings. I have had so many Palominos on my bench it's not funny. Tube sockets mounted directly to the PCB and low/high current circuit paths running too close to each other and producing audible artifacts is not what I would call "second to none" build quality.
Click to expand.As an amp builder and tech since 1994 I cannot agree with your build quality analysis of the Crate Palomino line.