There are lots of ways you can do this.
- Build three presets, one for clean, crunch, and high gain. Add effects to each preset and then assign them to footswitches.
- Use a single amp and then assign scene controllers to the gain and input trim, level, etc so that you can use one amp for three different sounds. Then you can assign each scene to a footswitch. Add footswitchable effects to taste.
- Use X/Y switching to put a clean and dirty amp in the same preset. You could dial in a crunch tone on the dirty amp, and then add a drive pedal in front for higher gain.
The way I set mine up varies based on the application.
For messing around at home and recording stuff, I basically have a main preset for each amp that I like. A Mesa Mark II c ++, Mark IV, Recto, A couple of Marshalls, etc, etc, etc. I'll dial in my best high gain sound, and then use X/Y switching to add either a USA clean or Shiver Clean amp so I can have clean tones on the same preset.
For playing live, most of my songs are either clean throughout the entire song, or mainly crunch with a clean intro or something. I have a "main clean" preset that I use for the clean stuff. Scene 1 would be ultra-clean, S2 a very light drive in front for grittier cleans, and S3 and S4 delay and a flanger. I'll put the 4 scenes in the first row of switches, and then add a volume boost (filter block) and individual effects in the back row.
My main crunch preset for live is the same way, but I do the X/Y switching with a clean so I can use the same preset for the entire song. Again, scenes in the front row and boost/effects in the back.
Finally, I have a few presets for individual songs that need certain delays (U2
) tremelo, or a pitch block to tune down a half step. I'm not the kind of guy that tries to match every song perfectly, so I only have a handful of these.
