Why still a Drive pedal and so many Amp models? (it’s not about the nr of Amp or Drive models)

Again talking about sound and not feel though.

if it didn’t feel right but just sounded the same...i would not change an amp! I try to pay attention to many details about sound...not only the tone/distortion/break up etc but also how the amp compresses, reacts and most importantly recovers after a hit/note...the latter is the reason i moved lately fully to Hiwatt sims.
 
I swear this is actually me typing this.
With Julia looking over your shoulder. ;)

Live I'm happiest with a good clean, a crunchy clean, an overdriven dirtyish and a lead . Usual FX to suit and no more than 3 irs. Yeah there's loads more I could do and have attempted to do but getting the basics set up and then twiddling the vol and sometimes the tone on the guitar keeps it old school and more comfortable for me. Some of you guys have remarkable arrays of things in your presets ..... nothing wrong with that - I'm just a simpleton looking for a straight up tone live.

Having a drive block in the clean presets makes sense to me as you can be funking it up and then need a bit of a blast for a bit. The other gainier presets I prefer to set the amp block up to give me the od.
 
because it's different, and often preferred. It's not just about getting drive/gain...it's all the other things already mentioned.
 
i can relate to it since i was using the drive block also mostly for edge of break up tones...Drives definitely got better and they sound just as good as a pedal. Still i think you should be able to get there just with the JTM45. That was the moment for me where i decided not to use the drive block. I was pushing matchless dc30 or hiwatt with drive block...than i programmed those edge of break up tones just with the amp, for my ears result was better and one less block/bunch of pedals to worry about. (too many options is really killing me sometimes)

edit: ...and in my opinion jtm45 and Plexi are 2 different beasts. I use 1 for more clean/edge of break up and the other for more saturated tones...though plexi clean can be also pretty usefull at times.

I have the JTM45 set up for edge of breakup. It's a thinner tone with good definition, great for blues and rhythm with my strat neck pickup. The tone king pedal fattens up the tone beautifully. I don't think I can quite get there with just the amp, but even if I could, I would lose what I love about the tone without the pedal. With the pedal, I can have both.
 
I look at pedal distortion and amp distortion as two totally different things. And I think each have their place.

For some things I like amp distortion better, but for other things I like pedal distortion better.

Neither is a substitute for the other IMO.
 
ofcourse, but i still also have 9 :) though with guitars it’s maybe a different story since it’s not only about the sound, its also about how it feels in your hand and how it inspires you.
And some people get expired using different drives in the drive block
 
You may be under the impression that you can do the same thing without a drive in front and you might be right, but you might be wrong. I think it would be impossible to exhaust every possible combination which would be necessary to determine one way or the other. Simply because you would have to show that every tone that someone comes up with using a drive block you can match without it. Theorizing that you think you can doesn’t quite cut it.

At the end of the day if you can get to your desired result with just the amp more quickly great. I get there faster putting ”xoticRC” model in front of the plexi 100 (for one expampe). It just gets me to that tone that sounds and feels right more quickly. It’s a recipe that I stumbled on but now I know I can use that as a jumping off point.
 
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