How different are your clean and dirty tones?

[nrvana8775]

I have a Bandmaster Reverb as my clean, and a Vox/Marshall hybrid as my dirty. I'm trying to figure out a way to get them somewhat close, but still retain their natural character.

Is it a lost cause, or is there some heavy eq'ing that I can do?

How different are your clean/dirty tones? Do you try to keep them similar, or just accept their character?

 

[wingwalker]

ONce you start A/Bing clean and dirty it's a lost cause...you might get the 2 set ups closer than they are on their own with various EQ's and such but by that point you will have likely runied the point of using the 2 different set ups.

Listen to Eric Johnson...he uses 3 set ups and they are all VERY different.

 

[Pat Healy]

Mine are night and day, and I like it that way. I like Fender tones for clean and Marshall tones for dirt. By design, they sound nothing like each other. That's a good thing, IMO.

 

[GuitarBrent]

You lost me at Vox/Marshall hybrid...what amp do you speak of? Vox and Marshall sound way different to my ear, but I think of AC-30 vs. 50 watt Plexi...and don't ruin your tone with an EQ pedal...enjoy the natural sound of your amps.

 

[nrvana8775]

You lost me at Vox/Marshall hybrid...what amp do you speak of? Vox and Marshall sound way different to my ear, but I think of AC-30 vs. 50 watt Plexi...and don't ruin your tone with an EQ pedal...enjoy the natural sound of your amps.

Dirty tones = Mayfly BC, which is a hybrid of vox/marshall, as far as the tone stack is concerned. I've heard that from multiple people.

SBEQ + Fromel Lush + VHT Valvulator = enhancing my tone, not ruining it. My amp/s sounds dead without those pedals .

 

[Captain Zero]

My cleans are dirtier than my dirty tones.

 

[NetStar]

Blackface styled scooped clean "Mesa inspired" scooped dirt.

 

[Madison]

Listen to Eric Johnson...he uses 3 set ups and they are all VERY different.

I came in to write the same. Nothing wrong with having both extremes.

 

[spentron]

I like being able to get the tones the same or close, and don't like how many pedals and channel switching amps lead away from that. Besides, in many respects what is good for one is good for the other. When you improve one, the other gets better too. But not always, clean can handle some serious brightness that's too much for dirt, for example -- essentially that level of brightness is an effect, it's just on the clean tone, and with an amp sound that can handle many effects, it can be better to get that brightness using an effect.

A slightly ironic reason one might want the tones different is that a fat clean sound is essentially metal when you add distortion... recently I tried an acoustic sim, with dirt that turns into industrial.

 

[ahab]

Clean = Tophat w/ volume down on my Gibson

Dirty = Tophat w/ volume up on my Gibson

Singing = Tophat w/ volume up on my Gibson and my treble booster or octafuzz on.

 

[Cap'nMayhem]

Get a Shut Up And Drive, your dirty tone will always compliment the clean tone of the amp you're playing.

 

[Dennis Rayburn]

I play through an Alessandro Working Dog Rottweiller (6L6s, has a Fender-like clean sound). I use a Timmy to get dirty tones that are similar to my clean tones, and a Menatone WMB to get dirty tones that are different from my clean tones. For leads I use any of the above into a clean boost, a Dan Zink Eternal OD or a Dan Zink Rinzai (I think "Eternal" tells you what pedal that emulates, and Dan's website says that "Rinzai" is a school of Zen).