Switchblade preamp tube question

Hello everyone first time poster here

I'm coming to look for some information from knowledgeable people concerning the purpose of the preamp tubes in a switchblade, mainly the V1. Well that's if anyone ever comes around in this dusty section of the forum

So I was looking at the schematics (the service manual is easy to find online, not sure I can link it here), i'm a long time user of the switchblade.

Could someone confirm that the V1 is for the effects loop,making it tube buffered ? By the looks of it v1b is the recovery stage.
V2a and v2b being for a "long tailed pair" type phase inverter ?

From what I can read all of the channel gain stages seem to be opamp driven, and there are no tube gain stages.

Not a problem I really like the amp, but i'm curious.

Thanks for reading

Once again I have to apologise for missing your post for so long Wesbo.  This is a dusty corner of our site and not too many people visit here.  It's all too easy to miss things, just as I have done.

For the record:

I have the schematic of the 50W Combo version, hope that matches.

No, V1 (T1 on their diagram) is not a loop driver.  It is a preamp gain stage followed by a DC Coupled Cathode Follower.  The reason for that is simple.  The common cathode gain stage is a standard preamp configuration and gives what most preamp stages do in terms of tone.  It is not often known that a lot of additional even harmonic valve character is introduced by the DCCF stages in a way unique to them if you know how to bias them to access that.  These two stages are giving you the main character of your sound, particularly in overdrive, and the solid state stages are performing the mundane control tasks their stages require cleanly at moderate levels.  Each of those SS stages is also protected by a pair of zeners around the feedback loop which will limit the signal and clip it at higher levels, but also they will also perform the additional task of preventing the opamps from clipping internally.  This is important as it completely removes the chances of any opamp imposing itself on the signal.  Cleverly, some of these zeners are made of differing values which will clip earlier on one side to the other.  This produces first clean no distortion, then asymmetric even harmonic, then symmetric odd harmonic distortion as the signal level is increased.  That's Clean -> Crunch -> Lead.

Recovery from internal clipping is one of the (few) ways an opamp can make itself known.  Don't let anyone tell you that opamps have a "nasty signature", they absolutely don't!  They are absolutely neutral in every way unless they are made to work by poor design outside of their clearly stated capabilities and those are immensely wider than our needs in every way.  In an amp which is made to run at 5% distortion levels when clean, does anyone think the <0.01% distortion any decent opamp stage introduces is audible in any way?  In making the opamps do the tasks such as level and tone control in a completely neutral way the valve stages are the only real contributor to the amp's tone until you choose to add in some of that built in SS clipping distortion, (which most SS critics seem to want to add externally via their ultra expensive boutique pedals anyway).  It looks a very good setup to me and, as you say, you are happy with the sound.

And yes, V2a/b is a long tailed pair PI just as normal.