Guitar-amp history has several forks.
One is the moment digital modeling became a realistic option.
The Line 6 POD appeared at the end of the 1990s. A red kidney-bean-shaped chassis holding the sounds of many amps. You could record without owning an amp. For the time, quite a strange proposal.
But what I want to look back at here isn't the POD itself.
It's the moment "just before."
Before the POD became normal, amp makers were still trying to answer everything with the tube amp itself. Distort more. Switch more. Record more easily. There was an era trying to answer those demands not with digital but with tubes and sheer quantity.
What was "doing everything"?
What '90s guitarists asked of an amp wasn't one thing.
Clean is needed. Crunch too. Deep lead distortion too.
Wanting to switch by foot.
Less noise is better.
Wanting to pass rack effects cleanly.
Live, big volume is needed. But for recording, a line output too.
To take all of these on in one box, the amp grows more and more complex. Channels increase. An effects loop is added. The EQ becomes independent. A line out is added. It becomes switchable by MIDI.
So "doing everything" meant packing demands, scattered per playing scene, into one tube amp.
And each maker's individuality showed in how it packed them.
Each maker packed "everything" in, still in tubes
This flow isn't the story of one company. In the '90s, almost all major makers ran the same direction.
Marshall deepened the gain with the JCM900 and equipped an effects loop and line out. In the following 6100 series, as a 30th-anniversary commemoration, it took in multi-channel and MIDI, trying to pack Marshall's history into one box.
Mesa/Boogie was originally a multi-feature pioneer. The Mark family had graphic EQ and multiple modes, and the 1991 Rectifier put out multi-channel high-output high gain.
ENGL increased features in a German way. The Savage and Invader lineage carried multi-channel, multi-mode, and MIDI as a matter of course, letting you craft settings finely.
Soldano showed the direction of designing high gain from scratch, and the SLO-100 became the standard for later high-gain amps.
Peavey's 5150 spread foot-switchable high gain at a reachable price.
Bogner's Ecstasy presented a modded-Marshall-like sound organized, in the form of a multi-channel boutique.
Britain's Laney too, like the VH100R, packed high output and multi-feature into one chassis.
Lined up, though the design philosophies scatter, the destination is the same.
Answer as many demands as possible with one tube amp. This was the '90s common assignment.
The packing had two directions
Sort the makers' answers and they split into two broad directions.
One is digging one channel deep. Don't add channels; instead, pursue the quality and push of the distortion. Marshall-style high-gain single-channel amps and purpose-designed high-gain amps like Soldano fall here.
The other is covering it all with multiple channels. Build clean to lead into one box, switch by foot or MIDI. The Marshall 6100, Mesa/Boogie, and ENGL are at this pole.
Neither is correct.
But both share a premise. The sound is made inside the tube amp, not by digital. Want multiple voices, add channels. Want to pair with effects, add a loop. Want to record, add a line out. All of it, trying to solve with analog circuits and sheer quantity.
Why tubes, not digital?
Looking back now, one question arises.
If you were going to make it that complex, why not go digital?
The reason is simple: at the time, making a practical guitar sound with digital was still hard.
Early digital gear often couldn't reach tubes in sonic persuasiveness and natural response. There were latency and texture problems too.
So each maker competed inside the tube amp. Add circuits. Increase stages. Switch channels. Add switching elements. Enlarge transformers.
They tried to realize "doing everything" by analog quantity.
The result is the large, heavy, complex '90s amps.
This isn't a wasteful detour. Until digital caught up, the tube amp certainly took on the era's demands. That quantity had its own necessity for the era.
The "premise" that changed after the POD
There the POD appears.
What the POD changed isn't just the quality of the sound.
It shook the very premise of "owning an amp."
Until then, recording and live sound-making were built around the amp, a physical box. There was an amp, a cabinet, a mic, and beyond that the console.
The POD proposed making sound without owning that box. Connect one small unit to the console and several amp-like sounds come out.
The first sound wasn't completely the same as a tube amp.
Still, many noticed that "the option of not owning an amp really exists." This was big.
From this boundary, the competition of tube-amp multi-featuring gradually changed meaning.
The need to do everything in one box isn't necessarily there anymore. Multiple voices can be taken on by digital. Effects too complete inside digital.
The tube amp shifted its stance from "a tool that does everything" to "a sound you deliberately choose."
Why record the amps of this era?
CSL (Chuuni Sound Lab) records real tube amps under fixed conditions and keeps them as Kemper profiles.
What interests it is precisely this "eve of the POD" generation.
Amps trying to answer the era with tubes and quantity, just before digitalization. By modern standards, large, heavy, hard to handle. Places to fully ring them are limited too.
Which is exactly why recording them now has meaning.
What to keep isn't "the best amp." It's holding what makers were trying to do in that era, as the sound of a unit actually ringing.
Align the conditions and you can compare, on the same footing, an amp that dug one channel deep and an amp that covered it all with multiple channels.
The feel of the "trying to do everything" era doesn't convey by spec sheet alone. Only by recording the ringing sound and the premise it comes from can you confirm it later.
Precisely because we stand in the post-POD world, there's meaning in keeping the sound of its eve.
In short
Just before the Line 6 POD appeared, amp makers were still trying to "do everything" with the tube amp itself.
Marshall, Mesa/Boogie, ENGL, Peavey, Bogner, Laney — though the design philosophies scattered, the destination was the same. Dig one channel deep, or cover it all with multiple channels. Both are answers trying to meet the era with analog quantity, not digital.
The POD brought "the option of not owning an amp" there. From this boundary, the tube amp shifted its stance from "a tool that does everything" to "a sound you deliberately choose."
The amps just before that fork hold, within their seemingly excessive quantity, a necessity of their era. Which is exactly why there's meaning in keeping them as the real amp's sound.