Well, I bought the HT-1 as I found the sound most acceptable. If you are looking for clean sound from the little amp, the setting is volume FULL and gain about 10 o'clock. Pretty decent but use a good set of headphones so you can keep the volume and/or the gain down if you really want it clean. For a dirty sound, this little amp is brilliant. It has a built-in reverb, which isn't too bad actually. Plus the build quality and appearance of the amp won me over. As for the Vox series, I didn't quite agree with the tone, be it clean or dirty. It seemed a tad flat, at least to me. And it didn't look as purposeful as the Blackstar. I could be slightly biased as I've the HT-5 stack before, but then when I went shopping for a bedroom amp, I gave these 2 brands a good try and decided on the HT-1, with a 4x8 cab. Nice and tight, punchy and still gets up to pretty anti-social volumes! Good luck, man!