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There's just one input option and one volume knob on the Class 5, so you won't spend too much time worrying about how best to set it up. The time-honoured approach is to whack everything up to boiling point and use the guitar's volume pot to regulate back from there.

So, armed with a vintage-style Stratocaster and with everything on the amp set to three o'clock we get to work. The Class 5 is rudely loud – enough to upset your neighbours to legal action levels and then some.

That means it has enough grunt for sensible rehearsals and, if you don't have a cacophonous drummer, it can deal with unmic'd small gigs, so long as you don't need huge, loud clean sounds.

The overall tonality is very much 'Plexi'/Bluesbreaker, with hints of that punch-in-the-chest mid-range, but softened and rounded slightly because of the lower power and, doubtless, the EL84 power valve. With the Strat's volume up full, the overdrive feels very sixties to this reviewer – think Jimi Hendrix and 1960s Beck as the general ballpark.

Switch to humbuckers on a Gibson-style guitar and things start overdriving much earlier. Guitar volume up full, it'll sing for solos and provide good harmonic feedback. This is Bluesbreakers-era Clapton all over – fat and compressy – through to a good AC/DC-style crunch.

We'll reiterate again that this is a very loud little amp. The tone controls aren't hugely powerful in the way that classic Marshalls never are, but they're interactive. Set the bass and treble high, and regulate the main part of the voice with the middle pot for best results.

With the volume set below half you have more headroom before the amp is distorting too hard, so you can add whatever stompboxes you like for different textures of boosty filthage. With various combinations of a Keeley-modded Tube Screamer, Fulltone Full-Drive II and a Crowther Hot Cake, we were spanning the gamut of Southern rock and blues sounds from Billy Gibbons to David Grissom and beyond.

The headphones output is useful for silent practice, though you don't want to be cranking the Class 5 through your cans because it's extremely loud, and it can start sounding very raspy through the headphones at higher levels.

Infinitely more rewarding is the extension speaker output – hooked up to a 4 x 12, you benefit from all that extra moving air, making the Class 5 sound gigantic.

Twenty years ago, the Class 5 may well have been laughed out of the music store – back then a five-watt amp had no right to sound good. Times have changed radically though, in that many players are willing to drop their bravado guard and finally admit that a little amp cranked up is often much more satisfying than a big one tethered down to tick over.

The trade-off for all of this singing tone at lower volumes is, of course, the sacrificing of much clean headroom at anything other than low levels, so anyone who's looking for a gig-level clean picker should definitely look elsewhere.

If you're after a simple valve tone monster for crunch and classic drive sounds, however, then you absolutely have to try this amp. Its combination of satisfying tones, usable volume, portability and, of course, price all add up to a winning package. Destined to be extremely popular, and deservedly so.