[floydmoline]

i feel stupid lol "petrucci" is the only name up there that i have heard :-\ also the mesa's and peavey amps are the only ones i have personally heard, and you don't like peaveys....... as far as "I desperatly need a tube amp that can be versatile tight and heavy, yet still be able to articulate the notes really clearly." goes that is kind of a contradiction of terms :-D not really many tube amps do clean and clear, they can be clean, but clean is normally not loud, and not really clean, if you started on solid state and going to tubes looking for the loud clean sound of transistors, you aren't going to find many* tube amps that can do clear tones, all tube amps warm up (distort) the sound a little bit. and all of the amps you listed are a higher gain amps, and are going to be the hardest to get a pristine clear tone from.