do you mean watching / playing live? or listening on stereo etc; there is good loud and bad loud volumes. if a band is good and onto their sounds then good loud. there is nothing worse than an awful band with awful sounds cranking it up. all in all though, i like it SUPER LOUD!
it is probably the step down tranny. used to happen to our bass player as he ran a 69 SVT through a transformer to convert the voltage to 240. ever since we got the transformer in the head itself rewound for 240v's this has never happened since. it was mainly the case that he would get a shock from ...
good gear means shit all. i used to see bands great gear and go "wow, this should rule," only to see them fuck it all up with some pansy shit that sucked. good gear in this case just means they have a job and an internet connection.