I had a mate in High School (Florida) who had a Laney half stack. It sounded decent for the type of heavy metal he was doing (Metallica, Malmsteen, etc). He would turn the mid-range down and make the amp really chug with low end.... I did sound for one of his shows once and had to physically get on stage during his set and turn up the mid eq so the the mic for the PA could pick it up.
I used to have a Dean Markley hybrid tube/solid state 12 inch combo amp in the mid-80's. It was a rackmounted amp that was mounted on a slant above a 12 inch speaker. The distorted channel sounded pretty good. The hope was that you would put it in a rack and drive a half stack with it. It had a true effects loop and a clean channel that seemed made for using external tone shaping pre-amp effects. I was playing a lot of Rush, Journey, Yes, Genesis, U2, and other 80's Rock/Prog Rock back then.
It looked kind of like this but with 2 rows of knobs:
I played it about a year into Berklee, then traded it for a Roland JC-120 on casters so I could do more jazz and R&B gigs...and roll my way through the rehearsal halls. It was loud and I was only playing distorted occasionally (through a ART multieffect rack unit). Granted...this was 20 years ago.