OD for clean-ish tone - your suggestions

W

Wildwind

Experienced
I like the punch of a true clean tone but prefer to use an OD for some tonal richness, plus I never need or want a true clean tone (p&w player doing mostly fairly edgy stuff, only electric guitarist, large band with lots of midrange competition). And I've come to prefer an OD vs. cranking up the gain control - seems to preserve the punchiness in the mix.

In the past I've used the Xotic RCB to good effect. But now I'm looking for something a bit different. I'm not explaining this very well...

So I want something to warm up my clean tones (Mesa Mark IIC+ - my base amp for all tones) - and hope someone can make sense of what I'm after here.

What are you using and liking? I've tried all of them and tend to get lost and confused, plus y'all have always come through for me.

Thanks!
 
FET boost sounds like what youre looking for. really transparent and clean at stock, the volume knob thickens and drives the amp, the drive knob gives you more hair
 
Look up the FET Boost settings for the Klon, that might help. Timmy can add a little something as well.

I've been liking the JTM45 for cleans lately and add a little output compression in the amp block. With the gain just on the edge of breakup, you can switch to the neck and strum for clean and then hit a hot bridge pickup and dig in for a little bite. But the output compressor fattens things up a bit and keeps volumes a little more consistent. Then you can hit an OD pedal to add even more on top without worrying about a huge volume boost.
 
I know this doesnt really answer your question but you may want to try the class a amps! Im loving the AC30 Hot Boost for just a bit of dirty clean with punch.
 
I like the Timmy. I also like the Zen drive, but with the drive set pretty low. Also, I never dial the mix past 50% on any drives I use. Just sounds better to my ears.
 
I've had success with Eternal Love, FET Boost (Klon settings), Ruckus, Shimmer, Timothy, and Zen Master. Which one I would use would depend on what I wanted to achieve and which amp I'm using. Some drives work better on some amps than others. Right now my main clean is the Bogner Shiva model with FET/Klon on Drive 1 X and Ruckus on Drive 1 Y.
 
Timothy with drive down around 1 or 2, tone up toward 10, low cut dropped down in the 20-70 Hz, and level around 7. Either that or the Shimmer Drive.

I also like the div13 cj amp model set so it's breaking up with the guitar volume on 10, then roll back the guitar volume and/or pick light so I just get some hair and compression, but there's still some sparkle and chime there. The mr z, ac-20, and nuclear tone models do that trick quite nicely for me too.
 
Lots of great suggestions! Thanks! I'm outta here in an hour and headed to the 'cave.

As for the Class A suggestion - I do appreciate that but I just have never found a tone I like. But it's been a while and there have been FW upgrades. Worth trying again. I admit I'm a rather hopeless Fender/Mesa Mark sort of guy. Hard to change after all these years.

Klon settings - can someone point the way? That's intriguing and may well be the answer.
 
I'm a big fan of just the Filter block for a boost - literally the "cleanest" boost you can get! Plus you can use more than one in parallel for options (either engaged simultaneously or consecutively), and you can also use the high- and low-pass options for the solo boost tone, rather than a simple clean boost.

Lots of flexibility there if you want the amp's tone to shine through uninterrupted, rather than adding actual clipping from a separate source. :)
 
As I don't like being left hanging and try not to do it to others...

First, many thanks for the great suggestions. I had a lot of fun trying all your suggestions and will definitely save some for future use, like the faux Klon thing. That, to my ears, was the best option for my use of all those suggested.

Second, I came to appreciate the RCB even more. I've used it for quite some time to put a bit of hair on my clean tone and was happy enough with it. And in the end, I found it was still my first choice.

Today I read up on the unit, not realizing it was a true clean boost, that many leave them on full-time, and that it is already exactly what I was going for. I just thought maybe there might be a better choice. IMO, it's always good to have your own reasoning straight. You guys made that happen.
 
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