solid state amps are certainly vulnerable to line transients as much as anything else: take it from an unhappy personal experience of mine.
No matter what the builder says, they can also benefit from upgrade AC cords & from line conditioning; again taken from personal experience.
I recommend the Chang Lightspeed 9900 amp, a 30 amp capacity unit that does not constrain dynamics & has built in MOV transient protection.
However if you want to get by on the cheap; get some GE V130LA20B MOV's or equivelant from an electronics supply such as Allied or Newark. Install at your wall outlet screws, paralleling directly across the hot to neutral, neutral to ground, & hot to ground. I used crimped spade lugs fastened under the outlet screws (crimps backed up by soldering - crimping to solid conductors is iffy).
This isn't the best approach but it beats nothing at all. Equipment should still be powered off & unplugged during thunderstorms no matter what protection you have; I use whole-house gas discharge protection at the fusebox, MOV's, Changs, & I still suffered damage when a direct lightning strike hit the pole right outside. Damage was minimal & repairable though, would not have been at all fixable if I hadn't had all that protection, but as it was only one single semiconductor was blown up.
MOV's are metal oxide resistors BTW.