Don't get wallet hurt. Go obscure. My two obscure picks from a year and a half ago (yeah I bought them):
1. HIGHLY recommend an AIMS tube head from the early 70s. This company's idea of marketing was to simply build the highest quality product. That's why you never heard of them. Players consistently compare them to the V4-B, but that's with Svetlana tubes. With the Holy Grail Newark Tungsram 3-hole gray plate 6550 pair they came with, you'll be bringing a pair, all right. I just sold 2 of these heads with the Holy Grail tubes, 2 amps for $400, and hadn't checked them out so I plugged up and we're talking 65 lbs. of thick, chest-pounding booty-quaking gorilla hormone sound. So check eBay, better chance of getting the Grail tubes in a barn find, both these had been parked for years, one actually was stored in a barn. Get it cheap because the shipping will kill you.
2. Discontinued Pignose V100B, again players compare this to a V4-B and a B-25 (I played a couple of those for years, too), and it WAS designed by Dennis Kager, who apparently designed amps etc. for Ampeg. Chinese built, competent Chinese tubes, incredibly light for a 100w tube head at 24 lb. Don't mismatch impedance (it has both 4 and 8 ohm jacks). The guy who told me said he burned up a set of power tubes by plugging into the wrong hole. Tubes are easy to come by with a wide range of choices. I have one for sale, but find one locally and avoid the shipping charge. The combo version is more common but lay for one mounted in the amp-only box, the B100VH (the H is for head). I think this extinct little tube amp is another victim of bad marketing.
There you have it, cheap tube amps that stack up to the V4-B in most bassists' ears, one American heavyweight weapons-grade 100w tube amp (it'll take your head clean off) and one lightweight Chinese-built but American-designed 100w tube head that is, after all, a 100w tube head.
20 lbs. lighter than the old one, 3 or 4 inches less wide than the old one, and sounds identical to my ears.
