Steve’s Music in Toronto used to have a sign in their acoustic guitar room, and maybe still does: “No playing the following songs: Stairway to Heaven, Dust in the Wind, Needle and the Damage Done, …” - you get the idea. I used to think this was just music shop sales staffer sour humour, but imagine if you were the one who had to listen to those songs all day, by all levels of player. I’d go nuts and maybe you would too.
Now move the Saturday morning tire kicking guitar players out of the acoustic room into the main shop where there are all those amps. Yikes! All those loud, overdrive and distortion control equipped, solid state simu-tube amplifiers trying to nail the intricate SRV, EVH, Satch, Zack, Kurt, Foo Fighters solos and riffs we all love to try and show off whenever possible. Now that would drive me insane. But I am not normal – I love the sound of electric guitar clean, overdriven and cranked too … as long as it is a good sounding amp. Otherwise it can be very disappointing. Great tone is fairly easily accomplished using technique, fresh strings on an acceptable guitar, limited pedal-age and an amp that can faithfully reproduce all that.
I recall several times I was doing my own Saturday morning guitar and amp tire kicking when people commented on how refreshing it was to hear a guitar played clean through an amp. I always said, “How else can you hear how it sounds?” I am positive one morning I generated the sale of a bunch of Squier strats when I was trying amps at a local store just by doing this. Of course my Squier strat had all the replaceable parts upgraded to some of the best available including Seymour Duncan vintage replica pickups. I noticed as I was leaving (with that amp) there were several Squier strats being sold. It’s not fair to compare the modified Squier strat I was playing with all the others hanging on the wall, but once you’ve heard a great sounding strat playing clean into a Twin Reverb with all that big reverb and big tone… you know good tone.
When you are trying out amps, start clean. If clean is not good, then more overdrive will never make the amp sound better. Move on. Find an amp with great cleans, then push in some more signal and see how it responds. A good quality tube amp should respond to your playing. It should get edgy and start to compress a bit with moderate volume settings on your guitar, then get really fun when you dime the guitar volume. You should be able to find a sweet spot where the amp can be clean, can be pushed with your playing attack and when your guitar is cranked up, get crunchy and overdriven. Try a Fat One Tweed Deluxe and this is exactly what happens, to the point you can get those dynamic responses with just your attack. Now you have great cleans, a nice edgy overdriven tone, and with a good quality amp, some crunchy rock tones – all without pedals. It all starts with a great clean tone.
Now, wasn't that an Am at the 5th position?
