After looking for a little all tube practice amp a VOX Lil' Night Train made its way to my home now.
This amp offers two tiny watts, just the basics like gain, treble, bass and volume controls.
As a very interesting plus there is a thick/ bright switch and a headphone output with a very good cab simulation.
The bright mode offers the typical ringing VOX tone, the thick mode bypasses the tone controls and gives a lot of crunch/ gain if wanted. The headphone output allows to play straight into the computer or a PA.
The LNT is very often offered as a bundle of the amp itself, a 10" closed cab, a high quality connection cable and a polish cloth (! ) for the chrome housing.
I upgraded to the back open V112NT cab with a greenback speaker.
My first impressions were really good. The amp offers much more sound level than two watts promise. I think it is possible to use it even for small gigs when it comes to these moody and bluesy moments.
There was one thing I did not like very much: The LNT is a gain monster! I prefer more clean tones with light crunch. But the VOX forum brought a perfect solution. There is a very friendly guy that did some experiments and he made a chart which tubes should be used for different characters.
The original setup of tubes is: two 12AX7 for the two channel preamp/ phase inverter and a 12AU7 for the power stage.
So I bought two JJ tubes 12AT for the preamp/ phase inverter ports and one JJ tube 12AU7 for the power stage (quite pricey at a very warm sound).
Now the tone and adjustability are much more tamed, no loss in output, BTW! The breakup begins now between 12 and 1 o'clock using the gain pot. - Great! (Before it was at about 8 to 9 o'clock, much too early, IMHO).
Everybody who likes the sound and habits of the AC30 series maybe will have some déjà vu. Of course it is not an AC30 but now the use of the dials can be done very intuitionally.
Whenever You think about buying a small amp, the LNT should be on Your shortlist.
I am VERY satisfied and maybe this thread can be a help for other forumites to make the right decision.
Last but not least a real benefit is the quite easy way of changing the tubes for customizing, too. It is a nice activity for all who like to tinker with amps but not being a studied tube tech.