Peavey Valveking 112

Check before you buy! The speaker itself has little to do with loudness in the overall scheme of things. You may be "overdriving" your 10" causing the breakup, and just replacing it with a 12" may not solve the issue. Handling capacity of the speaker is important here. Will it handle the wattage from your power amp?

I have an Epi Valve Junior and that little 8" speaker can push 108db with no problems. (5 watt amp.) When connected to a 4 x 12 it pushes 115db. Yes, a little difference, but it's more the resistance than the speakers themselves.

Just make sure if you buy a cab that it will handle the wattage you're going to send its way!

Surprised this wasn't said already, go to a shop and try out a bunch of 1x12 combos, buy the one YOU like.

that being said go look at a peavey bandit or if you can find one and old peavey heritage or a duece, those amps are 2x12's but they will definetly stand up and bark when needed.

What is the amp you have now?

when you jam with your friend,what does he play...guitar/ or drums?...

that's about what i figured...so your real problem is getting up over the drums. there ARE some tricks you can try here before rushing out to get a new amp.....what you do is tilt your amp upwards towards your self and stand right in front of it while playing. this way it will serve as a kind of moniter for you as well. ...you should be able to at least be able to hear yourself pretty well with the tilted amp. question is wether or not your drummer can hear you. if HE can't, then perhaps looking for a 2x12 or 4x12 may be in order. things to consider right now are wether or not you plan on perhaps playing some shows in the near future. as you are jamming with a drummer now, you should consider THAT in your purchase as well. you will no doubt want a little more power for the live application. as this may be the case, then i would suggest looking for a nice 2x12 marshall jcm 900,800, DSL, or TSL...all of these are tube amps and will most certainly give you enough volume for both you and possible other band members to be able to hear your guitar with or without a P.A...the tilt trick works very well at shows as well. you can always at least be sure of hearing yourself. just about any tube amp will give you a nice volume boost...but keep in mind that most fender tube amps don't really facilitate heavy metal very well without some kind of a foot pedal and even then is still kind of sketchy...even a 1x12 tube amp will crank out nicely without that nasty solid state breakup at louder volumes. allthough the tilt trick will allow you to actually lower your volume a bit.

the real trick to playing within the band setting is to actually back the gain DOWN on your amp. cleaner tones ALWAYS cut thru much better than fully saturated,distorted tones. and bring your mids up as well. avoid scooping them out. you will dissappear in the mix with NO mids.

also when looking at tube amps, keep in mind that higher watt tube amps ARE NOT what you need. a 25 watt tube amp can peel the paint off of a wall. lower watt tube amps also allow you to crank the volume up to the saturation point at a lower volume than the high watt amps. most of if not all those marshall amps have a switch on the back allowing you to cut the wattage in half from say....50 to 25 watts. so keep that in mind.

you really just need to go to some shops and check out some amps. at the very least you can get an idea of what is out there and perhaps find the same model on evil bay for cheaper.....

Good troubleshooting there bachmirage! I tend to go straight for the answer to the problem most times. Guess we should always ask WHY someone wants something and how they're using what they've got to avoid a lot of wasted time and misdirection. Not that anyone's answer was wrong or misleading for what we all knew at the time.

And YES!!!! Tilt your amp, or get it off the floor and tilt it. They make an amp stand for this purpose. We do it in the studio all the time. Not to "cut through" as it's usually just a guitar amp, but to keep the overall sound from getting lost at the floor level. You can hear a distinct difference when recording an amp that sits on the floor and an amp that's been raised off the floor. We even raise our 4x12's a foot or so off the floor for recording.

"most of if not all those marshall amps have a switch on the back allowing you to cut the wattage in half from say....50 to 25 watts. so keep that in mind."

The difference between 25 watts and 50 watts is almost not even noticeable (more "headroom" with 50 but that is about it). Here is the deal with smaller wattage amps.. MOST of the "great" sounding tones come from the power section being overdriven. You can get there quicker with a 25 watt amp than say a 60 watt amp (or 50).
When the power section is cooking and the rectifier is starting to sag and the speaker is still not giving it up is what most people will call the "sweet spot" on the amp..
Now, with that said, It's my belief that you have to learn to "play" the amp just like you learned to play the guitar.
NOT just "turn everything to 10 and go". This is the REAL difference between boutique amps and mass produced ones. There are VERY real differences between tone control sittings, "feel" and "reaction": of the amp to your pick attack, etc. You have to learn how to use those no matter what amp you get.
In a real situation if you're using say a 30 watt tube amp and you can't be heard over a drummer then you're all playing WAAY too loud