Is it true that the better the clean channel on amp.....

I haven't much to say that isn't obvious but at least it'll bump your question to the top of the stack... three things;

(a) You will play better when you like your own sound.
(b) chances are an amp with a good plain clean sound will produce something good when the fx are added, so this is the way to bet
(c) but, darn it, you never can tell, and someone may well come back and tell you in all honesty that their cheapo no-name amp has a lousy basic sound but the setup responds extremely well to pedals. It's like someone who smokes and drinks all their life and lives to be 103...

 

You can always add a pedal for more dirt, but you can never add a pedal for more clean

However, how well an amp responds to a particular pedal is a trial & error crapshoot unless you know how the circuit inside is set up (and even then...).

 

Which amp has the best clean sound? Depends on who you ask. Tone is VERY subjective and only you know what sounds best to your ears. Try everything within your reach and when the right combination happens, you'll know it.

 

It's not necessarily true.
My experience has been that the more simpler the circuit the better the amp takes distortion pedals i.e. Selmer, early Marshalls etc.
That is just my experience - the best sounding amp with these type of pedals was a Selmer "Little Giant" - but you couldn't gig with it. I find BF Fenders hard but I didn't grow up with them.....

Best, Pete.

 

You like fender clean and metal distortion

That's exactly like me

Most guys take a good clean sound and build off of that... I've found the opposite to be true for me. I take a great dirty sound and clean it up by just rolling down the volume. So far it's worked better than any OD + amp combo I've come up with

Just depends on your particular style

Certain pickups, speakers, cables and pedals clean up better when rolling down the volume. Mostly I use the volume pot on my guitars. But I also use goodrich volume pedals... they clean up beautifully... especially the LDR2.

 

The Shiva has one of the best clean channels I've ever heard and is very pedal friendly. It's a 2 channel amp but I've found I like to get my dirt from pedals on the clean channel better than using the drive channel. I'm stacking a Zendrive into a Fulldrive. The Fulldrive is set to comp cut (clean boost mode) and the possibilities with the Zen seem limitless.

 

Not in my experience.

Back in the 70's I had a great BF Twin reverb with JBL D-120's in it. You couldn't beat the clean tone. With pedals it sounded harsh and brittle, much like the Hot Rod's today.

I installed a master volume on the vibrato channel and found that with a little dirt dialed in, it reacted better to pedals. In the end I built an A/B switch, ran the A side into a Fender reverb unit and into the normal channel and the B side into an MXR Dist+ and into the vibrato channel. I'd adjust the normal channel for max clean and the vibrato channel for max dirt. Worked great.

So why'd I sell that amp.... stupid stupid stupid