Today I dropped into Skip's Music in Sacramento CA to pick up a couple of harps. Skip's is one of the few places I've found where you can buy Hohner Golden Melody harps without ordering them. Tim Barron and I got to talking harp amps and he said he was often using an inexpensive Fender Mustang III amp for gigging lately: A 100-watt solid state 1x12 amp with digital modelling.
The amp has a street price of only $299. The tone was impressive, and with 100 watts on tap it really barked when he stepped on the gas. Tim had the modeler set up to emulate a Fender '59 Bassman with the digital settings pretty much as you would expect: rolled off treble and middle, boosted lows, low gain and high channel volume. It sounded totally giggable to me.
Sure, it does not have organic texture of a great vintage tube amp, but it ain't bad at all. As I said, I was impressed.
