Found another way of getting dirt sounds last night

[Lanefair]

So up until recently I'd been boosting the amp with a bad monkey, switching channels on the amp for OD, and sometimes using EQ in the fx loop just on the OD sound to beef it up.

 

Last night I put my triboost in place of the bad monkey, and decided to use the bad monkey as my overdrive on the clean channel of the amp. But it just wasn't sounding good for some reason.

 

Anyway after much experimentation, I turned off the triboost, and set the amp to the OD channel but set the pre gain so it sounded clean. That way I could put the triboost on lpb mode and boost the amp into OD. It had that kind of marshall crunch going on, and naturally was always louder and beefier.

 

I haven't tried this 'boosting the low gain OD channel' since my DSL100 days because I could never get a good enough clean sound. But my classic 30 can do really clean on the OD channel because my Tele has such a weak output.

 

I've bored myself typing now. Anyone else do this? It's quite hard to get the balance right so you can have a loud clean sound, then boost it into OD without going 5x louder etc.

[anglerfish]

I think a lot of people do this. This is essentially what I do, except that I don't really go for a "clean" sound at the outset. More of a "slightly dirty," then boost from there. I think it's the best possible overdrive sound... tubes working hard!

[Lanefair]

Yeah it's definitely a good sound. And keeping on the same channel always sounds better in my experience because your pedals are all working within the same parameters (EQ and compression of the amp).

 

Also the OD channel on my amp is always a lot quieter than the clean. So I can crank it more until I get to a bigger venue and then just use the clean channel instead. Bit backwards I know.