Solid State Experience

I can relate to that. Some years back I was playing in a tribute act and was using a great marshall plexi.
About two days before a large outdoor show the marshall went belly up and even though I got the amp to a good service tech quickly he said it wouldn't be ready for the weekend because he needed time to go over it properly and since the problem was intermittent he didn't want to do a quick solution and then have it happen again.

Instead of just using another marshall head I decided to go with a line 6 head because I was told it was very powerful, could get the plexi sound and wasn't bothered by issues that tube amps were.
Against my better judgement I went along with it, being strapped for time, and we had to leave that evening to do some travelling to the next out of town gig.
Once we got there I was able to spend some time with it and got a resonable setup that sounded pretty good.
Once onstage though everything went out the window.
Like you the guitar's volume knob didn't react the same way it did on the marshall and once I started pushing the amp it got very muddy and lost in the mix, and this head was supposed to be a 350 watt head, or so I was told.
Also I couldn't use my pedals because the head just didn't didn't react well with any of them.
Since then I have no problem with SS amps for practicing at home but for live gigs I'll stick with tubes.

I played a gig last night in a small venue, had a Fender hot rod deluxe, which was at the other side of the stage though, but luckily after messing about with an MG Marshall I convinced the guy to give me the Fender. Sounded like my guitar was farting more than anything, hate solid states with a passion!

The Fender was good, though a little lacking in high end, strangely, just couldn't get anything near my marshall at all.
The sound guy told us we weren't allowed our marshalls as they'd be "too loud", yet, we were struggling to be heard over the drummer as it was. I think I'll be avoiding that venue from now on.

Not allowing Marshalls???  I'll just show up with a old 100 watter fender with 4 10's see how they like those apples!

That's really funny. I had a little discussion with a soundguy recently about this issue too.
It was a gig that we organized. So we hired the soundcrew too. At the soundcheck he complaint
I was too loud even I baffled the amp. He said he can't "allow" me to play that loud and suggested
me to use the clean channel.... Ermm....what?? I said to him 'just step aside from the mixing desk please!'
At this time this poor guy hasn't realized the we always bring our own soundguy. Our soundguy is really, really good.

Since this incident we have a kind of running gag.
Whenever somebody is too loud we say "Just switch to clean channel, you are to loud!"

Alex

I have never understood the universal mission of every soundguy to get a guitar player to turn down.  Lets face it the guitar is THE sound of rock and roll.  We get to do what we want.  I personally take being told to turn down as an insult.  I'd wager that soundmen don't tell the famous guys to turn down because they'd be told where to go!  As long as you are not being offensively oblivious to the volume I say crank 'em up!