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The phrase "Cleans up nicely"


scolfax

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never had a problem i took it to mean that an amp with the gain taken down and saturation and stuff.. cleans up nicely, i guess it could apply to pickups too though.. or a guitar.. if you drive a strat at half volume it cleans up nicely.. kinda like that..

 

mho

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This is true, but I just apply the phrase to the way the guitar sound reacts to the volume control.


:thu:



I understand, but in all my time playing I've only ever owned 1 guitar that went muddy when the volume was reduced. Every other guitar I've owned has remained tonally consistent, and it's unusual enough that I consider such behaviour 'faulty'.

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I understand, but in all my time playing I've only ever owned 1 guitar that went muddy when the volume was reduced. Every other guitar I've owned has remained tonally consistent, and it's unusual enough that I consider such behaviour 'faulty'.

 

 

I think alot of that has to do with how you dial in the amp as well. I set my amp and guitar controls to minimize tone loss when I dial the guitar volume down. Usually for my rig that means dialing the amp in with the guitar V and T rolled off slightly. That gives me room in both directions for dirt, treble, and volume.

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I understand, but in all my time playing I've only ever owned 1 guitar that went muddy when the volume was reduced. Every other guitar I've owned has remained tonally consistent, and it's unusual enough that I consider such behaviour 'faulty'.



I would say it's a question of degrees.

I have had a guitar that went completely "flat" when backing off the volume, and it did indeed need sorting out, but to me, the phrase "Cleans up nicely", can be interchanged with "cleans up sweetly",

Some guitars just sound and feel better as I roll off the volume than others.

Those are the ones where I might say "it cleans up nicely", but obviously thats a subjective thing...my sweet cleans might be another Mans piercing shreik.

I would be happy to use the term with amps also, as it obviously applies, but I dont chop or change much amp wise, and how I mean "cleans up nicely" can be applied to DI'ing through FX/modellers with no amp involved.

:thu:

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What values do you use? When I tried it sounded unnatural and I ended up ripping it out, but I only tried a couple R and C combos.

 

 

For strats, I think I've been using 100k and .001uF. For humbuckers I usually leave off the resistor. I think I've got an 820pf in my les paul, but I don't remember for certain.

 

What you can do to experiment is just solder some wires from the top of the volume pot and the middle and leave them hanging out the guitar, reassemble and swap values in and out 'til you find some your happy with.

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its the same as some food recipie ingredients, description, "take a nice snapper fillet...."

 

"Well NO {censored},,, OR, we could try taking a not so nice filet, or maybe a rancid piece of snapper jerky that was regergitated by a sick pelican and sun dried into leahter on a sun soaked dirty dock."

 

I mean, do we really need the word, "nice"? Like if they didnt say use a nice flilet, that we wouldnt be smart enough not to just use any old piece of crap laying around?

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that phrase bugs me.


other ones that bug me:

"this amp takes pedals well".


"this $xxxx
is waaaay better than this


"floyd rose trems suck"



Amen to that! All amps take pedals well and the only thing that sucks about a Floyd Rose is a person's inability to follow directions..

As for an amp cleaning up well, I think from the other end of the spectrum.. I worry less about how a dirty amp will clean up than I do about how long a clean amp can stay clean. I do a lot of clean playing, and I like a nice pure tone without distortion when I do it.. Sure, I love me some metal, but I wouldn't want to use the same amp for both. Hence the reason I own a POD X3.. :thu:

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that phrase bugs me.


other ones that bug me:

"this amp takes pedals well".


"this $xxxx
is waaaay better than this


"floyd rose trems suck"

 

 

Allow me to disparage your claims.

 

"This amp take pedals well" reminds me of "This asshole takes cock well"

 

Price doesn't determine quality. Cheap EHX {censored} is way better than most of this newfangled boutique {censored}.

 

Floyd Rose VIBRATOS do suck. As do all locking VIBRATOS for that matter.

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The phrase was originally used to describe how well an amp or OD pedal cleaned up when you rolled back the guitar volume. That's still what it means to me. However, the phrase has been used out of context so much that is has lost the meaning.

By the way, this thread cleans up nicely! This is just an example of how meaningless a phrase can be when used out of context. :poke:

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For home playing, I don't really care about it. I'll just footswitch around clean/dirty. Live, it's nice to have that. I like to run my Deluxe Reverb breaking up just a bit - back off a couple ticks, pure clean, volume full on and it's a nice crunchy rhythm tone, nothing super heavy. Stomp on a pedal to take it over the top for leads. It's funny, at home I don't really care for poweramp distortion tonally - and it's too loud! But it sounds great with a band.

 

Listen to the end of this clip (around 5:05) as he goes from rhythm to solo. That's cleaning up (well, the reverse, but you get it - it's the response to playing dynamics). Trainwrecks are supposed to be the king of that and I've got to say I've never heard an amp do it better than that clip. Sounds good clean and then it comes out of nowhere and screams!

 

[YOUTUBE]_lLcL13Z1FQ[/YOUTUBE]

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