not much .... and to get even that it has to be freakin' LOUD!!
I do think the Ampegs are louder than an equivalent Marshall.
I took the V2 head over to a friends house a few months ago and we ran it into a 4x12 Marshall cab ....... he played it a while .... turned it up ..... played some more ..... turned it up ..... maybe got about halfway up and started laughing ...... he stopped and said, "That thing's stupid loud!"
Though I've always said I like a pristine clean ( something I seem to be moving away from actually) the Ampegs are more of a 'tweed' sort of clean where you get a slight bit of dirt when you bear down on the strings.
But for any real distortion you have to use a pedal.
I love the Ampegs actually ....... they have the best tone controls ever which were way advanced for the late 60's when they were designed.
On my Ampegs I still use the 7027a power tubes which, though they're just a beefed up 6L6, I think they have their own sound which I like a lot.
They are amazing sounding amps ...... a full rich sound that's just inspiring to play.
I'd still be using them as my main amps if they weren't so heavy.
Even the V2 head alone weighs around 50 pounds and my VT40 combo (their equivalent of the Super Reverb with 4x10s and 60 watts) weighs 95lbs and the VT22 (their version of a Twin ..... 2x12 and 120 watts ) weighs 105lbs!
As for whether they're just bass amps or not ..... I dunno.
They're definitely not bass amps people just chose to use for guitar .... they were absolutely sold as guitar amps with slightly different model numbers than the bass amps.
But the tone control set-up on my Ampegs is exactly the same as the V4B head and exactly the same as the SVT so maybe they're the same amps inside.
My understanding is that Mr Ampeg designer was old school and in the 60s that meant he thought distortion was an amp-fault and designed these to stay clean even wide open and damned if they don't basically do that.
Lol. That's awesome. Do you think they seem so loud because they stay cleaner longer? Like some of those old 60 watt, or whatever they are, Fender combos seem loud as fucking hell. Like painfully loud because they're so clean and punchy.