Looking for small combo tube amps for home playing - boutique or otherwise
Hello all! I’ve got a Fender Tone Master Princeton Reverb and it’s solid, but I keep wondering if a proper boutique tube amp gets closer to that vintage clean/edge-of-breakup Fender sound, or if that’s mostly hype. Open to boutique, but honestly open to anything else too if it gets me there.
I play mostly blues and classic rock — clean to just-barely-breaking-up, not into high gain at all (except Gilmour songs). Strictly a bedroom player, never gigging, so low volume breakup matters way more than loudness or headroom for a stage. No pedals yet but planning to start building a small board soon.
Budget is around $1500, ideally under $2000. Only catch is that nowhere near me to try any of these in person, so I’m buying blind off reviews and demos.
Looking for some solid recommendations on small combo tube amps. And regardless of boutique or not , what would you actually point someone toward in this budget for that vintage clean Fender tone or a very versatile amp. Thanks!