Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

[jerryjg]

I have some fine vintage amps. However, I only have one amp that will get great clean AND dirty tones. That amp is a '69 Sunn tube head that is basically a tweed sounding amp-Very nice warm clean Fender tones and organic ballsy crunch when cranked. I have a Peavey Classic VTX, a Marshall JMP 100 watt/ 4X12 GT-65 Cabinet, and a Carslbro Fatboy. The Marshall is unusable for cleans, The Peavey also has an awful clean channel and the Carslbro( British tube class A) has nice cleans, but not like a Fender. Well, My early 70's"Sound City MKIV" is in the shop, but its one helluva fine sounding clean tube amp, and it also gets decent dirty tone when used with a good overdrive pedal. I guess its easier to get good dirty tones out of a clean amp than vice-versa.Anyone have the one-dimensional amplifier blues??Anyone have an amp that does dual duty really well? Anyone have a nice sounding purely clean amp that sounds good when pushed with a good overdrive?

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Both of mine do clean and dirty well. Splawn is a nice JTM-ish clean and a wicked modded Marshall dirty, Road King has two great clean channels and two Recto dirty channels (some aren't into the Recto sound, I am). I could use a nice Fender for the best cleans, though...

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

part of the reason i switch heads is because i like clean of on amp and the the dirt of another...

sometimes i just use pedals for distortion thru a good clean amp... easier

 

[Kac]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

I'm not saying my amp has the best of anything. but I enjoy using both clean and distorted channels on my VOX. I use an OD-808 to boost a little more gain on the distorted channel.

 

[mediumpimpin]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

I honestly don't like sparkly/chimey clean sounds i.e. fenderish stuff. I like a little dirt on my cleans, so I guess you could say my amp does what I need. The orange has great dirty sounds and pretty decent cleans. I think if I wanted a really nice sparkly clean tone, I'd be looking into getting a dedicated clean amp.

 

[darnright]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

The best amp I have for both is a Tubeworks RT2100.
Pushes over 100 watts through a single 12. Very buttery Fender clean and cranked it goes from Marshall to Mesa.
And I only paid $75 at my local pawnshop.
as karmadog777 says; "The best amp you never heard"

 

[loudriver23]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Twas one of the main reasons I chose my Mark IV, I love the cleans, dirty cleans, low gain, and high gain tones i can coax out of this beast. It does take a bunch of tweaking to get ya there, but once you're there.... oh so nice.

 

[chuckbat]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

I have some fine vintage amps. However, I only have one amp that will get great clean AND dirty tones. That amp is a '69 Sunn tube head that is basically a tweed sounding amp-Very nice warm clean Fender tones and organic ballsy crunch when cranked. I have a Peavey Classic VTX, a Marshall JMP 100 watt/ 4X12 GT-65 Cabinet, and a Carslbro Fatboy. The Marshall is unusable for cleans, The Peavey also has an awful clean channel and the Carslbro( British tube class A) has nice cleans, but not like a Fender. Well, My early 70's"Sound City MKIV" is in the shop, but its one helluva fine sounding clean tube amp, and it also gets decent dirty tone when used with a good overdrive pedal. I guess its easier to get good dirty tones out of a clean amp than vice-versa.Anyone have the one-dimensional amplifier blues??Anyone have an amp that does dual duty really well? Anyone have a nice sounding purely clean amp that sounds good when pushed with a good overdrive?

First off....nice avatar!! My Hughes & Kettner does clean and dirty very well. It is a 20w tube amp and I fell in love with the tone as soon as I heard it. I got home from trying it out and wanted to kick my Fender 4 x 10 DeVille. What a piece of junk compared to the Hughes. Matter of fact I got rid of it pretty quick and got the Hughes. The 20 watts is loud enough to do a club with and quiet enough to play around the house without waking the dead.

 

[ModestCargo]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Sunn amps are incredibly underrated and under-appreciated.

 

[Smilemon]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Lets see... I put my volume on 4, I have edgy clean... I turn it to 7, I have crunchy 70's punkish distortion.. Perfection

 

[ModestCargo]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

I'm hoping I'm going to be able to go from Black Crowes style dirt to "edgy clean" by rolling my vol. back on my guitar, when I get my JTM 45 clone.

 

[Loserchief]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

My Engl Sovereign has everything from nice fenderish cleans to thrash metal and everything in between. it does both clean and dirty very well.

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

My Victoria Double Deluxe sounds great clean and dirty, and best right in the middle.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

The closest I've ever heard an amp come to doing both brilliantly was a VHT Pitbull 50 2 x 12 combo. That thing was just an unbelievably beautiful clean amp with a devastatingly good overdrive channel, and if it wasn't for the back-breaking sheer weight of the thing I would have bought it. To my ears, there was none of the compromises that have to be made with Bogners, Soldanos, Boogies or Marshalls, where they get anywhere from 60% (Marshall/Boogie) to 90% (Bogner) of the way there but always leave something lacking in a live gigging environment. This thing was 100% in both directions, and if I were back in those luxurious days when I never had to touch my amps, I would have bought it.

Instead, I have opted for amps which follow the criteria of producing big, bold but warm clean sounds, and that take good pedals well. Since I need about 4 stages of gain for my work, this freed me to go on the search for the best OD and Dist pedals I could find, and those which would work well cascaded in series, for a broad pallette of gain options and textures. Strange as it may sound, I find there are less compromises made when using top quality pedals than with the vast majority of multi-channel amps. Recording is a different matter, and I will often crank my clean amps to deliver a driven sound instead of pedals, but for live purposes, the pedals win out with their master volume friendliness and ease of modular integration into my rig. By the time it hits a 57 and the FOH mix in context with a full band, the method used to attain the signal becomes irrelevant.



Cheers...................................wahwah

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

In the eighties, when dual channel amps became prevalent, i felt that almost all of them compromised one end to do well at the other...i.e. often the clean sounds were compromised for more overdrive, or sometimes vice-versa. The understanding of the technology has come a long way and I know there are some amps now that can do a much better job.

However, in those years i have been building amps and lost track of commercially built amps. I recently finished my Matchless DC30/Vox (4 x EL84) based amp, which has 2 channels but they are not switchable. You simply plug into one channel or the other, and can go from beautiful Vox-y cleans to raging overdrive simply by using the volume control(s) on the guitar. I believe Trainwrecks are this type of amp, too (I have heard several clips and they do work this way).
Now....this amp can do it all on only one channel with NO master volume either. In the process of looking at the signal on the 'scope, i found something very interesting....it is not preamp distortion, as used by many amps to create a driven channel....the preamp stays clean all the way up but begins to push the Phase Inverter stage. That way, the clean is there if the input signal is a little lower, and starts to push the PI as the input from the guitar increases. It seems there is still plenty of level available, though, when playing clean (remembering that a driven signal is not really getting louder, the waveshape just compresses at the top and/or bottom).

Some of the current 2-channel amps i have heard do have very clean 'cleans' but i don't recall hearing any clean channels with much 'character' like say,a Fender clean sound.

 

[guitfiddle]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Some of the current 2-channel amps i have heard do have very clean 'cleans' but i don't recall hearing any clean channels with much 'character' like say,a Fender clean sound.

I have a Music Man HD-150(4-6L6GC) and with the preamps (mid gain op-amps) on about 7 it gets a nice tone with sizzle on the edges of the notes, and when the guitar volume is on around 6-7 it cleans up into a really nice Fender-inspired tone. I don't run high gain on my amps, and the Music Man wont do high gain well anyway, but it works great for rhythm tones that need a bit of fuzz around the note, and still chimes when the guitar is rolled back. An Austin Gold OD pushes it just right for thick sustain for solos. Nice piece, and the very best Fender(Leo, when he was running Music Man) made amps you might ever hear of.

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Yes, i agree with that...Musicman's do have the Fender-y clean thing and some ammount of overdrive. I would imagine by today's standards that there is simply not enough drive available (of course the Musicman amps date back quite a long time now) but for classic rock they would be one of the few amps with a great clean sound. Thanks for jogging my memory...( I see very few Musicman amps coming in for repair because they are so well made and reliable, even after many years).

 

[Rich_T]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

Sunn amps are incredibly underrated and under-appreciated.

I dunno dude, I've been looking for a cheap one for years, but they go for big bucks these days, they are pretty popular in the doom and stoner scenes.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

My Bogner Shiva was my solution. Before that, every dual channel amp I tried had compromises. The Bogner was the first amp that I really dug the cleans and the overdrive on with very little tweaking. The cleans stay clean, but the overdrive gets that saturation at decent volumes so it all works well. When it's opened up in band context it just cuts and fits with a big sound and it stays together - so I couldn't be happier.

 

[Bludave]

Re: Both Clean AND Dirty Sound from your amp?

My Bogner Shiva was my solution. Before that, every dual channel amp I tried had compromises. The Bogner was the first amp that I really dug the cleans and the overdrive on with very little tweaking. The cleans stay clean, but the overdrive gets that saturation at decent volumes so it all works well. When it's opened up in band context it just cuts and fits with a big sound and it stays together - so I couldn't be happier.

+1 for me. The Shiva is the best channel switching amp for what I do I have played through. Great Cleans that will rival any Fender, I have SF Fenders also. What I particularly like about the Shiva is the Reverb, The Reverb is as good as I have heard in anything. It took me a while to dial in a good OD sound, but now it kills,