US standard house wire 115VAC is a 15 amp circuit, if you limit your amp to 5 amps you're starving your amp.
Plus theres always a chance voltage can increase [boost] by mistake and screw up your gear.
I would never feel safe at a gig with a variac knowing someone could/would crank the volatage for whatever reason.
Variac's are made for Electronic Techs in a shop environment to bring up line voltage on new components/circuits slowly to break them in and other shop uses.
EVH started using a variac on a UK 230 volt Marshall using USA 115/120VAC wiring cause at the time it was the only Marshall he had.
I can tell you the Transformer spec's/parameters on an amp rated for 230 volt run at 90 with a variac are NOT the same as running an American Marshall or other 115VAC amp at 90VAC with a variac.
Not the same thing.
And unless he measured the output taps of the 230 volt Marshall tranny the amp could have been seeing 110-115-120 who knows despite what the variac was set at.
I suspect the amp was seeing slightly higher than 90 volts.
Variacs are just amp VooDoo that will cause un-intended problems down the road.
Besides nobody at a show is going to jump out of the first few rows with a volt meter and measure ur line voltage.
After a fatty & a few drinks they have no idea what your doing anyway.