And some parts in them should also be able to be fixed or replaced with a soldering iron and basic electronics diagnostics.
Even my 10 years old behringer junk still work, what are you buying that breaks so often than you'd consider paying 5x more vs just having a spare piece of gear ?
> (Good micro-controller based stuff is a different story, but amp emulators are not built like top of the line digital equipment.)
I mean if you buy the cheapest, sure
I once built one of these mini guitar amps based on an LM386, $5 of solid state components. When plugged in a real cab it sounds just great.
And spoiler alert; with a couple of flat solid-state volume boosting pedals, an EQ made on a breadboard, and cheapo amplifier he was able to basically recreate the tone of several famous amp sounds. Honestly it makes me reconsider what sort of setup I want and need personally.
I do think that tubes do give a particular overdriven characteristic that is difficult (though far from impossible) to achieve with solid-state components; I don't think it's impossible (or even difficult) to make a solid-state amp that is as good as a tube amp. Just happens that when you use SS components, it's almost always much cheaper; and it becomes harder to sell an expensive amp if your cheapest amp is almost as good. So I believe that the engineers at the big name guitar amp companies tend to give less effort and development to cheaper amps than their big siblings. Which has given SS amps a bad name.
I bought a busted JCM 800 combo for $20 when I was 18. I fixed it with a soldering iron, multimeter, a copy of the schematic from ampage.com, and Forrest Mims III electronics book from radioshack.
In response to other posts about repair, high quality tube guitar amps are actually extremely reliable if not abused, and some component replacement that is done prophylactically (e.g., re-tubing and re-capping) is often unnecessary.
Uh, yeah, no. Tube amps are terribly unreliable and most solid-state stuff will survive being dropped off the truck. There is a reason why touring musicians are tending to use modeling amps now. They can take their Neural/Kemper/Fractal box in their carry on on a flight and grab whatever standard speaker-amp is available at the destination and be ready to go.
And maybe a tube amp is nicer--if you get the "stage queen". Unfortunately, that's less than 10% (often less than 1%) of whatever amp model you have and costs a fortune if you are ever lucky enough to bump into one probably needs an expensive amount of service work to start. Whereas your modeler is a very good approximation and you will always get it when you buy one.
My point is - you buy a tube amp (or quality hardware solid state that is not a computer on a surface mount pcb that no one can repair) and you will have it for decades or sell it at close to what you paid. Not at all the case for Line 6 style stuff.
Maybe my ears are a bit less golden or whatever, but I barely break out any of my old tube amps since getting a Kemper years and years ago