OK!
Amp arrived well, dialed in a couple core tones at the northern home base tab low volume levels and was out 6 hours later. Did 3 loud sets and tweaked settings as I ran out. Pretty easy ride, as I only really needed a dynamically responsive and bouncy clean tone and a liquid lead tone for the show. The reverb was a bit meh, but I need more time to bed it in. Altogether was a good first night out.
Tuesday I did more low volume dialage at the groovy music pad and then played two shows, an improvisation workshop at a high school and a two set club gig later in the evening. The Monday at home dial-a-ride and evening gig trial helped me get stuff together for these shows. The workshop was at modest volume and, as I learned at home, was best suited for the full 35 watt setting even with the wick trimmed back. The lower wattage settings lost some of the @$$ and did not dramatically lower output in a useful way. At full wattage, decent throttle with no pedals and plenty good. The later show let me open her up a bit (master at 2 PM), and I found that the extreme channel two setting with the pre dialed back a scootch was way more useful than I imagined. Guitar volume rolls produced a useful range of gain tones.
When I return next Thursday, I'll bring up a delay (Pigtronix Echolution 2 ultra pro), parallel mixer (Suhr Minimix), and an OD (not sure yet...maybe a Lovepedal hardwired Eternity, maybe a first edition Barber Ltd, maybe a Maxon SD-9). Would prefer to bag the OD and I imagine I should be able to do so with some more tweakage to the channel balance.
Initial verdict: Hitting it!