Not Very Good With Amps

The constant buzz could be one of several things. Do you have fluorescent lights in the room? They are notorious creating interference. Is the power supply properly earthed? Do you have a three pin connector or just 2-pin (un-earthed)? Has the guitar been properly shielded?
The grungy sound is probably because your father has set the "gain" knob to give him that sound. Clean should be not far off the "0" mark, but you will hear when the sound is what you want, better than me try to describe it. By turning the gain down, you'll alter the overall volume, so, when you've got your clean sound, you'll have to adjust the master volume again.

the buzzing could just be the single coil pickups as well.

Without hearing the amp its hard to give advice on what's wrong. The best can just be a WAG (wild A&& guess). Here's a few. Output tubes biased 'way too cold, rubbing or torn speaker cone, failing plate resistor, cathode bypass cap, cathode resistor or grid resistor, failing preamp tube, power supply problem, excessive power supply ripple, low signal tube bias is pushing it into saturation, front gain or volume controls set to high.

Joe

i'd say it is probably just the gain being set too high and that is why you are having buzzing sounds, especially since you said you are getting a distorted sound everytime you plug in. i'd say try turning down both the "volume" and "gain" knobs down to zero and then playing with them til you get the sound that you want. you aren't really going to hurt the amp unless you turn both up to ten. and even then, you're more likely to blow a speaker than hurt the actual amp.

Yeah, the hum is probably coming from your Strats single coil pickups. That is why humbucker pickups are called "Hum" -bucker. They eliminate the hum. So this is normal, especially at high volume or high gain settings. Just turn down your guitar when you aren't playing. You won't notice the hum when playing.

That amp probably has a clean and overdrive channels. Just look for a switch on the amp or use the footswitch if available. Try the clean channel. :D

As others said, look for a control called gain (overdrive, saturation) and turn that down a bit. This control allows you to dial in the amount of distortion you wish to use.

Excessive hum and too much distortion are common signs of worn out "power tubes," so if adjusting the controls as advised above won't clean it up, replacing them is something to consider.

If that's an amp with a tube rectifier, a weak rectifier tube will make more hum and the amp's output will be down because there's less voltage on the other tubes, but they'll drive into distortion more easily.

The hum is from the Fender pickups, they are grounded through your body. I wonder who came up with that one...

Properly shielded single-coil pickups do not hum.

neither do the SCN's

neither do the SCN's
I may be wrong, but I don't think that SCN are actually single coil pickups, I believe that they are stacked humbuckers.

SCN are singlecoil pickups. They just use a different type of magnet that bill lawrence designed to specifically achieve a single coil sound without any hum.

SCN are singlecoil pickups. They just use a different type of magnet that bill lawrence designed to specifically achieve a single coil sound without any hum.If that's right, it's physically bogus to claim they're hum free. A single coil pickup will pick up hum. Shielding can help, but won't totally stop it, else it couldn't pick up the varying magnetic field induced by the vibrating strings. The only way a different magnet can reduce hum is by using a type such as a rare earth "supermagnet" with a stronger magnetic field, to allow using a coil with fewer turns and less inductance that picks up less hum but still gets the same output from the strings because of the stronger field. But it can't make it "without any hum" by any means, if there's a single coil in the pickup. It's impossible physically. Low hum, certainly, but that's not the same as no hum.

Excuse me Richochet, Samarium Cobalt Noiseless (SCN) are more stable than Alnice magnets. UNLESS, exposed to extreme heat. Which the added stability makes then WAYYYY less noisy than Alnico magnets. I am going purely off of what the Bill Lawrence website states and the fact I have heard the 50th anniversary strats which have virtually no hum at all. And if there was hum is what not noticeble at all.

Stability of magnets doesn't produce or prevent noise. Permanent magnets don't produce noise. Noise is produced by a coil inductively producing a voltage from a varying magnetic field in its environment. The presence or absence of a magnet inside the coil doesn't affect the coil's sensitivity to picking up noise, nor does the type of magnet, other than as the permeability of the magnet or pole piece affects the inductance of the coil. I'm only speaking of immutable physical principles. Mr. Lawrence makes good pickups without a doubt, but that's pure sales talk you're relaying here.

(Looks like I correctly guessed what he'd done, as you mentioned cobalt-samarium magnets. He's using strong magnets and underwound coils to reduce the hum.) :D

Any guitar will sound quiet in an environment with low alternating electromagnetic field strength. And if you use a combination of reverse wound, reverse polarized pickups they'll act like a humbucker and be very quiet. Run 'em in an unopposed configuration around flourescent lights, a CRT monitor, television or power transformers, and you'll hear a difference. Low inductance single coils like Fender's won't hum like high inductance P90s, in any case. The secret to reducing single coil hum is reducing the coil's inductance, but then the output drops way down unless you boost the pickup magnet(s)' magnetic field way up to compensate.

Pickups are pretty simple devices electrically.