Slight breakup newbie

[Soundhound]

Ive been a clean amp devotee for quite a while now and have a bunch of them, (ceriatone ots, bassman ri, working dog rottweiler, reeves 50) and use a variety of drives (always switching out, experimenting) for various flavors and degrees of old, breakup etc.

Recently though ive played a few amps on back line that had extra gain staages, and found I seem t be developing a taste for amp breakup. At first probably just slight breakup, which served as a nice base for some old pedals. Not necessarily better than a big clean, but different.

One was an egnater renegade, I'd played one a while ago and kind of liked it, and this time is was a lot of fun as well. I dialed in just a slight crunch for the clean and used pedals on top. The lead channel actually sounded great, but I got caught up in the work the rehearsal and forgot to try it out. The only other lead channel I ever remember liking was the lead channel of a tone king metropolitan. I play a fair amount of slide, and that metro lead channel seemed like I could play slide without a pedal live, which I've never done.

The other surprised me. It was a Mesa nomad at first it sounded harsh to me' But i fooled with the eq and wound up liking it just fine. The amp was miced and the stage volume was low but it sounded full and punchy with a little grit dialed in and some ods on top.

So my question is, what recommendations do y'all have for channel switching or single channel amps with some controllable breakup? These two seemed like fine choices, but potentialy a little boxy, or not, id have to To live with them for a while to get the feel. But im thimkng there must be a whole world of this knd of thing that im unaware of due to my love for having a big clean base to work from.

I'm thinking I want the breakup to be tight so I can use pedals on top. I always like to have a big clean at my disposal, and a various levels of dirt... The guys whose tone I like are the usual, Duane, dickey, Grissom, jimi, srv, Derek trucks, mick Taylor, sonny landreth, Lowell George. What I don't like is what sounds to me like zipper tone, warren Haynes, Eric Johnson, etc.

Thanks!

[Soundhound]

Sorry for theridiculously long post. What I'm asking is, what's your favorite amp for controllable slight breakup the clean channel?

[FearlessFred]

my tone king imperial's blackface clean channel is on the verge of breakup at gig volumes, give it a listen

[Onioner]

I'm still confused. I love most of my amps for their controllable slight breakup.

I guess my favorite is a Fender Blackface style amp. Takes a lot to break it up, but when it's still mostly clean, just with some hair, it's pretty lovely to play.

[whaiyun]

You can use a clean booster to get the preamp breakup sound, and you get to control what volume the amp starts to break up. However, to get power tube to clip requires the amp to be loud

[Soundhound]

I guess what I'm looking for is a great clean channel with some controllable gain, so I can get a little hair on it at a variety of volume levels.

[Dale]

Slight breakup is what I think of as controlled by right hand (pick attack) technique. If you are on the edge the volume control and right had should allow you to get what you want from a one channel amp. I like 5e3's myself, but the tweaker and AC15C1 do this as well. The Blues Jr. I had previously could do this as well.

[gillman royce]

Change the V1 tube to a 5751 and you'll get only slight break up

[Soundhound]

Thanks guys, I do use those techniques and others. I play with volume on my guitar generally around 6 or so, and adjust for grit, etc. And I generally am playing through a big clean channel, and any grit that I'm getting is from a variety of ods, from low gain to mid, stacked, etc. So what I'm riding is the pedal.

Now what I'd like to try, is a clean channel with a controllable amount of grit at a variety of volume levels, so I can get the amount that I want just from the amp (whether I'm at a low stage volume or something louder) and then I'll use pedals on top for going farther (for leads, slide, stepping out etc). Both the Egnater and the Nomad seemed to have this capability, a gain stage on the clean channel for a little fattening. And I'm wondering what other amps might as well that people are liking?

[voxylady]

AC15 does that perfectly for me.

[Soundhound]

You can control the amount of gain in the clean channel of an AC15?

[Dale]

I can with the AC15C1.