@ Chito, embot, and eugene:
Thanks, mga bossing. I'm just blown away by the Ghia's tone. Coming from a no frill, two-knob amp, the tone is just so awesome! The tone control works differently. Instead of just adjusting the presence, it thickens the tone as you dial up the knob. The tone becomes more saturated and compressed. According to MarkFlo, that's how his Victoria works.
Being a Class A 18 watts, it starts to break up at around 12:00. Put the volume at 11:00 and the tone at 01:00 and you'll hit the sweetspot. And the amp is loud for an 18 watter.
Mark was right, get a good amp and you'll kill your pedal GAS dead. Now I'm just using a tad of compression and a bit of slapback delay to get the tone that I'm happy with. Occasionally, I kick a smidgin' of OD to kick the gain a bit, but mostly it's the amp's natural tube distortion that I use. This is one amp that'll be pried from my cold dead fingers first before I'd let go.