Members Faber Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 If an amp has a crap OD channel, you can make it sound good with pedals. OTOH, if an amp has a crap clean channel, nothing is going to help that sound better... This. Another plus is that clean channel + pedals give a far more consistent sound from one venue to the next regardless of volume compared to drive channels which often need to be turned up to a certain point to sound good. Otoh there is something to be said for running a good drive channel with the drive down and master up, and then ride the guitar volume for clena to crunch sounds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members honeyiscool Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 What's a channel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members docjeffrey Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 FWIW, I'm old. I love metal. I've seen dozens of metal bands over the years--my favorites are Megadeth, Machine Head, Chimera and Mastadon. Yeah, I know they are old school, but I like 'em. My son toured with the Mayhem Festival (he was the official reporter for the tour) for the last two summers and he goes to every metal show that comes thru the Front Range. I go with him from time to time, especially to check out more recent acts. I like In Flames too--they have a restaurant called 2112 named after their favorite band, which is also my favorite band:-) Anyway, I play metal riffs all the time with my ESP Eclipse and my Les Paul Baritone thru a Krank Rev Jr or a Marshall DSL. I love the genre. It's very complex and diverse, but there are a lot of people my age who are pretty small minded. They've basically become worse than their parents and grandparents. Hard to believe, but it happens. Good heavy distortion is very hard to dial in. Good clean tones are too. Metal requires different tools than classic rock and blues, but just because you have the tools doesn't mean you can play. Try playing Hetfield's 32nd notes with ALL DOWNSTROKES while singing at 180 bpm. Try dialing in Adam Jones or Chris Broderick's tones. Learn a Megadeth song with all of its rhythm and modal shifts, not to mention the screaming leads. See if you can play it as razor sharp as Mustaine and company. Then come back and tell me that metal is 3 songs and one tone. I echo what mesa/kramer says..."old man" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DaleH Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 What's a channel? Watch and learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Doctor49 Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Anyway, I play metal riffs all the time with my ESP Eclipse and my Les Paul Baritone thru a Krank Rev Jr or a Marshall DSL. I love the genre. It's very complex and diverse, but there are a lot of people my age who are pretty small minded. They've basically become worse than their parents and grandparents. Hard to believe, but it happens. It may be so, but i still don't enjoy it.Does that make me small-minded? Not that I really give a rat's ass, but I am curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members =JL= Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 FWIW a lot of metal over the years has been recorded using a rack preamp/stereo power amp rig, basically a sophisticated pedal/clean channel combination. Personally I AM only interested in clean channels. Most of us would think having a distortion pedal built into the guitar is pointless, cheesy, and kills versatility. I think it's exactly the same having it built into an amp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members docjeffrey Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 It may be so, but i still don't enjoy it.Does that make me small-minded?Not that I really give a rat's ass, but I am curious. No. You missed my point. To say that it's basically one tone and three songs is very small minded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members OldGuitarPlayer Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 I play mostly blues and jazz. I bought my vintage Roland Cube 60 combo because of it's legendary clean channel/tone. The overdrive channel is passable for just overdrive. It sort of thickens the tone and works great for a decent blues sound. You could never play metal with this amp without some sort of pedal. I am mostly interested in the clean sound of any amp. If it has a decent gain channel that's a bonus. If it's an old single channel tube amp I'll use an overdrive pedal but that's about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kit_strong Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Well, if given the choice between an amp with good cleans and lousy OD sounds or lousy cleans and good OD sounds I'll take the one with good cleans any day of the weak. Like others said, there's plenty of ways to get good OD sounds through a good clean amp but no way to get good clean sounds from an amp that doesn't have a good clean to begin with. Ideally all amps would have both but we know that's not always the case. But in my case, I think I do have both up to an extent. My Mesa Boogie ElectraDyne has sublime cleans (to my ears) and very lush reverb but also does really good vintage-voiced crunchy tones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hipster Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Gee... I dunno. I like the clean channel so I can hear what my guitar and my playing sound like. If you want distortion, you can just stick a screwdriver through the speaker a couple of times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kayd_mon Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 It must be pretty awesome to not be able to tell the difference between a Gorilla clean and Blackface clean. I guess I'm one that doesn't care about drive channels, since I like my pedals. Also, having just one clean channel and one gain channel wouldn't work for me, since I regularly use clean, light gain, and more gain for what I play. The easiest way to do this is with two overdrive pedals (or a combo pedal), since most amps don't have three independent, footswitchable channels. Even if they did, the trick would be finding one that has all three sounds that I really like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members foppy Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 I thought metal was for old people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members notjonahbutnoah Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Pshhhhh, channel switching is great. My Stiletto Deuce Stage II is a {censored}ing beast. Lowbrow can vouch. Fendery/Voxy cleans, ROARING Marshall (vintage, modern, whatever you wanna dial in) tone... heh, all tube circuit. Man, you single channel nazis are missing out on some great things these days, but hey, to each their own. That said, most, not all, multi channel tube amps have pretty nice clean channels, so really a good OD channel is my main concern. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BryanMichael Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 That's fully backwards to how I look at amps. Seems to me the clean channel is the easy part. It's nothing more than a preamp, like my Audio Buddy preamp I bought for $65. I think the hard part would the other side, the overdrive channel. To me, that means I could never trust your ears. I agree with bsman. Good "Clean" to me means warmth, harmonic complexity, and the ability to get some compression and "pushed" sounds the harder you hit the amp or the louder you turn it up. That's a very complex set of criteria that is not going to be mimic'd by your Audio Buddy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BG76 Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 It must be pretty awesome to not be able to tell the difference between a Gorilla clean and Blackface clean. +1 - although here I believe the Gorilla is considered the better amp. I don't usually play with distortion so I don't really care about the high gain channel. To each their own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members acefreely Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Personally I like dirty amps...but a lot of people like good cleans because they can use pedals to get the dirt as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BigTimeFun Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 It's easier to add dirt than it is to clean it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RaVenCAD Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Super compressed distortion is cruise control for metal kids who can't dig into their strings. Metal is perfect for players with weak hands. In 1995, I had a Jackson Dinky Reverse ran through a Peavey Classic Chorus 212. The Classic Chorus 212 has a shape knob, so dialing in the classic scooped mids metal sound was easy and it sounded like God. A local metalhead-dude came over to my house with a buddy of mine and he asked to try my Jackson. Sure, no problem. He played it for a couple minutes and he said to me "man, you can't make this thing sound bad!" So I said to him, "sure you can, hit the channel switch and try it again.." He did, and played whatever it was he was wanking on again, and he discovered that he could indeed make my Jackson and Peavey sound like complete and utter crap.. It was at that moment I realized exactly what Rex is saying. Scooped mids and super heavy distortion are nothing but a crutch for bad playing. With them, dude sounded like James Hetfield, but without them, he was nothing. Sure, they have a place in music, and they always will. But if you want to test yourself as a player, you play it clean and see if you've really got the part down. If it sounds good clean, it'll sound even better once you apply the right channel to it. Thankfully, the Classic Chorus 212 also sounds amazing clean if you have a clue how to play the guitar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noisebloom Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 I agree with the OP with the exception of the thread title. I think there are plenty of us -- old and young alike -- who appreciate a good gain channel over cleans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members benzem Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 FWIW, I'm old. I love metal. I've seen dozens of metal bands over the years--my favorites are Megadeth, Machine Head, Chimera and Mastadon. Yeah, I know they are old school, but I like 'em. My son toured with the Mayhem Festival (he was the official reporter for the tour) for the last two summers and he goes to every metal show that comes thru the Front Range. I go with him from time to time, especially to check out more recent acts. I like In Flames too--they have a restaurant called 2112 named after their favorite band, which is also my favorite band:-) Anyway, I play metal riffs all the time with my ESP Eclipse and my Les Paul Baritone thru a Krank Rev Jr or a Marshall DSL. I love the genre. It's very complex and diverse, but there are a lot of people my age who are pretty small minded. They've basically become worse than their parents and grandparents. Hard to believe, but it happens.Good heavy distortion is very hard to dial in. Good clean tones are too. Metal requires different tools than classic rock and blues, but just because you have the tools doesn't mean you can play. Try playing Hetfield's 32nd notes with ALL DOWNSTROKES while singing at 180 bpm. Try dialing in Adam Jones or Chris Broderick's tones. Learn a Megadeth song with all of its rhythm and modal shifts, not to mention the screaming leads. See if you can play it as razor sharp as Mustaine and company. Then come back and tell me that metal is 3 songs and one tone. I echo what mesa/kramer says..."old man" I have noticed......yup......I agree.But....as fast as Hetfield is all downstroked 32nd notes@ 180bpm WOULD be impossible...must be a typo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Some people ONLY play clean maybe? Just like you ONLY play overdriven? Those people ONLY caring about the clean channel would be just as valid as you caring ONLY about overdrive. I can see some old jazz guy going into a Guitar Center to buy a new amp for gigging at the Holiday Inn or whatever and not giving a {censored} about how the amp makes you sound like Hendrix. Are you confused by why musicians like that exist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members vcnyls Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 Rembrandt didn't start with beige canvas. Hahahhaha. Quotation of the day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Angry Tele Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 seems like whenever you plug into an amp at a store the employee invariably cranks the distortion. I think most players care about both clean and od sounds. Unless they just want headroom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frets99 Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 In 1995, I had a Jackson Dinky Reverse ran through a Peavey Classic Chorus 212. The Classic Chorus 212 has a shape knob, so dialing in the classic scooped mids metal sound was easy and it sounded like God. A local metalhead-dude came over to my house with a buddy of mine and he asked to try my Jackson. Sure, no problem. He played it for a couple minutes and he said to me "man, you can't make this thing sound bad!" So I said to him, "sure you can, hit the channel switch and try it again.." He did, and played whatever it was he was wanking on again, and he discovered that he could indeed make my Jackson and Peavey sound like complete and utter crap.. It was at that moment I realized exactly what Rex is saying. Scooped mids and super heavy distortion are nothing but a crutch for bad playing. With them, dude sounded like James Hetfield, but without them, he was nothing. Sure, they have a place in music, and they always will. But if you want to test yourself as a player, you play it clean and see if you've really got the part down. If it sounds good clean, it'll sound even better once you apply the right channel to it. Thankfully, the Classic Chorus 212 also sounds amazing clean if you have a clue how to play the guitar. Truth so pure. As a clean player, I look for brilliant, aggressive cleans. However, I love an amp where you can hit a footswitch and get that sweet overdrive that just pushes your guitar into the mix. Both my Peavey Prowler and Laney AOR 30 get there while still managing to have different personalities. 6L6 and 6V6 tubes respectively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members honeyiscool Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 I swear there are a lot of me out there, who play on the verge of breakup of an amp and so find channels to be a weird curiosity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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