I personally thought it sounded a little on the muddy side when using by itself and going past nine o’clock but then again it’s only a power amp with no preamp. I use a few pedals to give it a nice little shove and never need to go past nine o’clock and it will shake the room and barely break up but going over nine o’clock it seems to start breaking up and I’m not fond of the way it breaks up myself.
If you are running the 44 Magnum straight into a cabinet and not through any pedals or anything else my guess is that it is defective. I just picked one up a few days ago and have thrown everything you can think of at it and it never did anything weird whatsoever. Sounded very good even at ear piecing volume levels