Why do people ONLY care about an amp's clean channel?

[tlbonehead]

Point being, if you really want to improve your playing, put away the electric geetar for a while. Practice those wicked leads on your acoustic. When you get them to where they sound decent, pick up the electric again.

that's pretty stereotyped. I've heard some metal folks who absolutely kill on acoustic as well.

[Willyguitar]

 

I love it when this happens. A free education when you least expect it! Well done both.

 

 

I paint. There is priming of the canvass, which may be beige. Impasto is the creation of texture. It is not necessarily something you start with and as far as I know nobody has done it quite like that - you need to create the sense of thickness and three dimension as you build up the painting as a whole, not from the start.

[Belva]

 

that's pretty stereotyped. I've heard some metal folks who absolutely kill on acoustic as well.

 

 

I have too. That's why I added the part about the acoustic being part of the practice regimen. Too many peeps who only play metal are hiding behind distortion and delay to make 'em sound good. Gimme a clean amp puhlease.

[rock-lobster]

 

Wanna see sumtin' funny? Take all distortion, except for the distortion that is inherent in all guitar amps. Have the metal guy play his wicked leads using just, say, a good blackface clean. You'll hear so many mistakes, flubs and just plain {censored}ty playing it will make you laugh at the suckah. Point being, if you really want to improve your playing, put away the electric geetar for a while. Practice those wicked leads on your acoustic. When you get them to where they sound decent, pick up the electric again.

 

 

How about on an acoustic?

Metal:

 

Acoustic (2 solos towards the end):

 

[Doctor49]

I paint. There is priming of the canvass, which may be beige. Impasto is the creation of texture. It is not necessarily something you start with and as far as I know nobody has done it quite like that - you need to create the sense of thickness and three dimension as you build up the painting as a whole, not from the start.

 

 

and so it grows.

 

I painted like Winston Churchill - get anything on the canvas then cover it up with what you wanted to do.

My mother was quite gifted in watercolours and despaired in a motherly way of my attempts in any medium.

Mind you as a pianist she was more impressed with my guitarrin'

[wavedalton]

 

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.

 

 

For me this is the biggest deal. Like a lot of people here, I like my clean channel set to the point of breakup. I started off using a gain pedal to get heavier sounds, but for a while decided to use my amp's dirt channel. Sounded kickass in the practice room, but then was completely different when playing a show (in particular completely screwing me up at one show I played with an un-miked amp). I like the idea of channel switching in theory, but I've found clean/semi-dirty amp plus drive pedals is way more predictable across different show/room situations.

 

Of course, the good thing is that if it works for you, it's the right thing.

[Doctor49]

i believe everything that Larry CArlton does is only on the clean channel using his technique and touch to do the rest.
and gest a wide range of sounds from his 335.

[onelife]

You need at least two amps. Very few amps can do both pristine Fender or Vox-like cleans and brutal Uberschall-like metal tones . That's why Hetfield uses a Roland Jazz Chorus along with his Mesas (or whatever he's using these days...). Classic rock tones, clean and dirty, are possible to get from one good amp like a Vox AC30 or a Dr. Z. But few true metal amps have outstanding clean tones. Some of them do a decent job, but I still think you should buy an amp for clean/blues/classic rock and metal if your range requires it....

 

 

The Yamaha DG series certainly can - I don't know why the ever discontinued them.

[onelife]

 

i believe everything that Larry CArlton does is only on the clean channel using his technique and touch to do the rest. and gest a wide range of sounds from his 335.

 

 

There is quite a bit of overdrive in his work on "The Royal Scam" especially "

.

 

I don't know how he was getting the sound but it's much more driven than most of his other stuff.

[BryanMichael]

 

The Yamaha DG series certainly can - I don't know why the ever discontinued them.

 

 

Yep. Yamaha had their own thing going on, but it seems like they just up and decided that Roland and Line 6 were going to rule the modeling market...and gave up. It's too bad too.

[Doctor49]

There is quite a bit of overdrive in his work on "The Royal Scam" especially " Don't Take Me Alive" . I don't know how he was getting the sound but it's much more driven than most of his other stuff.

 

 

just his trusty 335 and tweed in the studio. mesas on stage these days.

 

http://mr335.tv/?channel=steely&vide...eely/steelyrig

 

http://truefire.com/335/pdf/lcpress_philippinestar.pdf

[Zappa74]

Pedals. Overdrive and fuzz.

[timrocker]

This thread really reminds me of a conversation that I had with a guitar tech one day. He was a tour guy for a huge famous band, coming through our fair city. He was really really opinionated, and not one to mince words. He claimed, basically, that going to two (and more) channels was where Amps Went Wrong. Starting with the belief that almost everyone actually gets their distortions, overdrives, boosts, and other tone shaping effects using pedals, he asserted that there was never any need to have two channels. And, in light of that, he said, when amps are made, if they put it all into making one channel that sounded effing glorious, well, you'd get your money's worth. It wouldn't specifically be a dirty channel or a clean channel, it would be a channel that was designed to take pedals well. So, in his opinion, the only amp that really "got it" and made sense for rock touring were the simple single channel all tube amps made in the 60's. He meant, I believe, specifically Marshall super lead plexis. Or JTM's? I'm not sure.

He also claimed to have had a conversation with Jim Marshall where he asked Mr. Marshall specifically: Is there a model of Marshall that you wish you could take back, erase, unrelease? Joe Guitar Tech claimed that the response was, instantly, Every Single One Of Them Since The Plexi. Well, that set me back in my seat a touch. Strong words.

One thing, in the years that I've been working doing local labor for concerts, I've never once seen a guitarist use the channel switching footswitch. It's all in their pedal board, all through one channel. If they use rentals, which happens a lot, the footswitch stays in the cabinet, unused.

I don't know but it made a certain sense. If your amp is designed to work well with your pedals, and not as a substitute for any of them, then they can put all of the good stuff into one channel. It should be able to approach the kind of breakup that players are talking about on this thread, with input sensitivity and adjustability.

Just passing this on as heard, I don't claim to know the deal.

[photon9]

^^^

I guess I'm weird, I use both, definitely using more of the drive channel lately, but it's more of a bluesy drive, definitely not metal.

[Felix_Unger]

Five pages? I expected one response of being told to STFU and being called ignorant (which I likely am).

[onelife]

just his trusty 335 and tweed in the studio. mesas on stage these days.

 

 

Wow, what a full sound.

 

I first heard Mr. 335 in the early 70s with The Crusaders and I thought "that guy knows everything about the guitar but he just closes his eyes and plays - I want to be able to do that". It was a turning point for me and my playing.

[Felix_Unger]

So, clean channel lovers want a clean channel that can become a dirty channel?

[onelife]

 

This thread really reminds me of a conversation that I had with a guitar tech one day. He was a tour guy for a huge famous band, coming through our fair city. He was really really opinionated, and not one to mince words. He claimed, basically, that going to two (and more) channels was where Amps Went Wrong. Starting with the belief that almost everyone actually gets their distortions, overdrives, boosts, and other tone shaping effects using pedals, he asserted that there was never any need to have two channels. And, in light of that, he said, when amps are made, if they put it all into making one channel that sounded effing glorious, well, you'd get your money's worth. It wouldn't specifically be a dirty channel or a clean channel, it would be a channel that was designed to take pedals well...

 

 

I had an Ultralinear Super Reverb for a while and I took all the tubes out that were for the vibrato/reverb channel and just used the normal channel and it actually worked much better - sort of like a Champ but with much more power, several more speakers and a heluva lot more bulk. I used pedals for overdrive, chorus, reverb and delay and, aside from the lug, it was a great setup.

 

I found out later that it was actually common practice to take out half of the tubes with those amps.

[Grant Harding]

The Yamaha DG series certainly can - I don't know why the ever discontinued them.

Really? I don't think you've spent much time with a tube amp if you think a DG can get anywhere near a good one in terms of great sound, either clean or dirt. They were OK early modellers, but can't even hang with my old (retired) Line 6 AX212 from the 90's.

[PrawnHeed]

 

I paint. There is priming of the canvass, which may be beige. Impasto is the creation of texture. It is not necessarily something you start with and as far as I know nobody has done it quite like that - you need to create the sense of thickness and three dimension as you build up the painting as a whole, not from the start.

 

 

You are right. I confused two techniques. However, Rembrandt did use a coloured primer - earlier in his career it was an off white/beige/pale grey, but steadily turned to a dark grey later.

[Grant Harding]

Really? I don't think you've spent much time with a tube amp if you think a DG can get anywhere near a good one in terms of great sound, either clean or dirt. They were OK early modellers, but can't even hang with my old (retired) Line 6 AX212 from the 90's.

I just read some of your other posts and you do understand tube amps. You really feel the DG is that good?

[Doctor49]

Wow, what a full sound. I first heard Mr. 335 in the early 70s with The Crusaders and I thought "that guy knows everything about the guitar but he just closes his eyes and plays - I want to be able to do that". It was a turning point for me and my playing.

 

 

this is all about his ability to play with minimal clean touch at high gains of the 335, then dig in progressively to get compression and finally grunt.

 

I too would love to be able to do that and have a clean set up I use sometimes just to try. hard.

[onelife]

 

Really? I don't think you've spent much time with a tube amp if you think a DG can get anywhere near a good one in terms of great sound, either clean or dirt. They were OK early modellers, but can't even hang with my old (retired) Line 6 AX212 from the 90's.

 

 

It's really quite subjective so I won't argue about it.

 

I have spent a great deal of time with many tube amps (both inside and out) and I've had the DG80 since they first appeared on the scene - it replace a Twin I had been lugging around for 15 years.

 

My first experience with Line6 was AmpFarm in the studio and it convinced me that it was no longer necessary to lug around 100lbs of Twin Reverb. I tried many amps including the Flextone and the AX212. When I had the Flextone at home my wife said "That sounds like a synthesizer, you're not selling your Twin!". I brought the DG80 home to try it out and she said "now that sounds like you".

 

I think there comes a time when the sound is more a product of the player than the equipment.

 

My personal preference is the DG over anything I've heard from Line6 and I respect your choice as well.

[Grant Harding]

No worries! When I bought the Line 6 AxSys 212 in 1996 it was the only digital modelling amp in history, then I got the upgrade kit applied to make it into an AX2 later. I got a DG stomp years later from a friend as a back-up and can honestly say that the sounds weren't as good as the Line 6. They were pretty similar though and both are fine tools, not toys. I never had anyone complain about my sound.

 

The Line 6 is purely a backup to my Bogner Shiva now. I power it up occasionally to make sure it still goes. Sometimes I'll use the Aux channel (no modelling) on the Line 6 to amplify the other side of the stereo effects unit in the Shiva loop. That gives a huge sound onstage and gives me a stereo feed to the desk (with 2 mics).

 

I got the Shiva for the clean sounds AND the gain sounds.

[onelife]

The Stomp is okay for what it is but it depends on what you are running it into. With both the DG80 and the AX2 you are looking at a complete rig. I first tried the DG1000 preamp but was not completely enamored by the technology until I went to a jam session where the regional rep for Yamaha was playing. His sound was far superior to the other guitarists who were using Fender and Peavy tube amps. When I asked him what he was playing through he brought me up onstage and showed me the DG80.

 

He actually programmed the amps (created the presets) for the first version before the software upgrade and told me he tried to create useful patched that would work onstage. They were indeed very usable and gave me a place to start when I got mine. When the upgrade came out with more effects (tremelo and chorus) he was disappointed in the new set of factory presets which he claimed were more about showing the features of the amp than providing good solid sounds for the working guitarist.

 

One of the things I like about it is the consistency of the sound and the zero maintenance factor. The very thing that makes tube amps great is also their weakness.

 

That being said, I'm sure you are okay with the fact that your Shiva will need the occasional tweak and new set of tubes. I'd love to have one of those.