Guitar Gear Forum

Thinking about cleans earlier today. What're y'all doing? What're your preferences, recipes, tips, settings, and tricks? More for "live" tones than studio.

Put SOMETHING vox flavored into your chain. Doesn’t matter what. Aiab, preamp, amp, speaker, etc. something.


Use pickups that don’t come from a strat or a les paul. Use ANYTHING else. Wrhb, filtertron, p90, tele, gold foil, lipstick, jaguar, anything.

I've been using the EVH 5150 50w, which has a really good clean channel, which makes sense since it's made by Fender.

With Marshalls I just roll back the volume since I'm not running a lot of gain.

In terms of effects, it depends what you're playing. For rock I always have a bit of chorus and delay.
For funk or country a compressor is important.
Spring reverb for surf music (lots) and blues (less).

Single coils are helpful too, my favorite clean tone is the neck/middle pickup on a strat. Neck position on a Tele is great too.

For live I'm always playing the Les Paul, so I use the middle position.

I've been using the EVH 5150 50w, which has a really good clean channel, which makes sense since it's made by Fender.

With Marshalls I just roll back the volume since I'm not running a lot of gain.

In terms of effects, it depends what you're playing. For rock I always have a bit of chorus and delay.
For funk or country a compressor is important.
Spring reverb for surf music (lots) and blues (less).

Single coils are helpful too, my favorite clean tone is the neck/middle pickup on a strat. Neck position on a Tele is great too.

For live I'm always playing the Les Paul, so I use the middle position.

My absolute favorite guitar sounds for cleans are Strats. Close second would be Filter’trons and similar style pickups. P90s are amazing too. In my SG or in my Fallout. I like the middle position of my Fallout wth both the P90 and bridge HB. Splitting the bridge HB makes it sound even cooler. My main clean sound is my Vibrolux but I’ll use other things. My Metro rolled back sounds gorgeous clean. My Rockerverb Mk III has a Vox like thing going on. I’ve also had an AC30H2 and the top boost channel was EXCELLENT clean. And modulation and delays just melted into that sound.

For effects, I love my Fender’s spring reverb (the Orange has great reverb effects too). I also will add flanger, phaser, chorus and delays. I love my Afterneath with the mix control maxed. It’s just ethereal sounding. If I’m using the Helix they have a newer Euclidean delay that is to die for. I’ll set the steps and tempo and just got lost in it clean. While I’m still looking to unload my Helix but a DL4 Mk II would be in my future just for that.

I've been using the EVH 5150 50w, which has a really good clean channel, which makes sense since it's made by Fender.

With Marshalls I just roll back the volume since I'm not running a lot of gain.

In terms of effects, it depends what you're playing. For rock I always have a bit of chorus and delay.
For funk or country a compressor is important.
Spring reverb for surf music (lots) and blues (less).

Single coils are helpful too, my favorite clean tone is the neck/middle pickup on a strat. Neck position on a Tele is great too.

For live I'm always playing the Les Paul, so I use the middle position.

here we go lollol

OP what do you like ? Andy Summers clean or Jimi Hendrix clean with a little Jazz in between..

Lol

I just my amps clean channel. Clean sounds are an after thought for me live. No fx, no nonsense. On stage I have maybe 30 seconds of cleans. In fact, we’re practicing a set for a show next weekend and I’m not even switching to clean. I’m leaving my footswitch at home and playing the short clean part on my regular heavy sound. DGAF.

Yeah I have about 30 seconds of clean too

My main sound in my last band was my Sound City wound up loud with the blue side of my Wampler Dual Fusion boosting it. Very bright and sparkly edge of breakup toane

Both my 2204 and tone king do great cleans. Just different flavors. Tele neck or strat neck are my preferred pick ups for clean. Almost always uses a reverb.

I use nice guitars with moderate to low output pickups through old amps that don't suck.



One of my favorites is my LPC on the neck pickup rolled back in to my Analogman Sunface through the '68 Bandmaster running JBL D120s. I played the whole show just changing volume on the guitar/switching pickups.

https://soundcloud.com/romanhandsbandtx/live-the-curtain-club-in-dallas-tx-10-7-2016?si=f9634f813f7b400195896e8f0151bccb&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing#t=5%3A12

fretless wrote:OP what do you like ? Andy Summers clean or Jimi Hendrix clean with a little Jazz in between..

I like all sorts of stuff, really depends on a variety of factors. I just wanted to start a conversation, hear how y’all are thinking about it and doing it.

Dave wrote:I use nice guitars with moderate to low output pickups through old amps that don't suck.



One of my favorites is my LPC on the neck pickup rolled back in to my Analogman Sunface through the '68 Bandmaster running JBL D120s. I played the whole show just changing volume on the guitar/switching pickups.

https://soundcloud.com/romanhandsbandtx/live-the-curtain-club-in-dallas-tx-10-7-2016?si=f9634f813f7b400195896e8f0151bccb&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing#t=5%3A12

Definitely a dirty clean. You guys are tight. Your singer sounds like Nathaniel Rateliffe. Awesome!

I am a Strat guy and love the tone between early ‘60s style neck and middle pickups on a 6L6-based amp.

Really want to try a SSS guitar with lipstick pickups through a Steel String Singer type amp. My favorite tone is what SRV had on Life Without You live.

Beef wrote:

fretless wrote:OP what do you like ? Andy Summers clean or Jimi Hendrix clean with a little Jazz in between..

I like all sorts of stuff, really depends on a variety of factors. I just wanted to start a conversation, hear how y’all are thinking about it and doing it.

I like many types of clean toans from Rolands to Marshalls. I personally like using effects like reverb, echo,chorus and tremolo. Especially tremolo, like a classic Fender amp. Its very musical and supportive of just about every genre. Its also very inspiring for the player. In Metal its not as important but outside of that its everything.

I've discovered that "clean tone" means something quite different from person to person. I know there are people who consider the intro to "Drop Dead Legs" as cleans. I'm more accustomed to Fender amps that are not pushed to clipping -type cleans. No hair, no break up, just solid booming cleans. But I think I'm growing tired of Fender cleans these days and am enjoying a thicker, more midrange, and compressed clean, but still not clipping. I've heard glorious cleans from jazz players. I think I'm leaning toward humbuckers through amps that don't scoop the midrange as much as Fenders. And though completely different, I'm really digging Gretsch cleans too. Am I the only one that thinks the classic Gretsch sound sounds like a Tele?

When I think of clean tones, I start with a Strat, out of phase into a Twin Reverb. That is my standard reference. Everything else gets compared to that sound.

For me, "clean" means almost no effects, with the amp set on the edge of breakup. The only allowable (lol) effects would be reverb and compression. The rest of the rig is mandatory: Telecaster and a Fender amp without "Deluxe" in the title

I have 'clean clean', 'clean' and 'dirty clean'. my clean cleans are no breakup, Id say rockman x100 clean setting sparkly chimy bit of chrous. clean has breakuip if you dig in, dirty clean has breakup for anything but the softest picking. I like a comprssor to help cheive those 3 types of cleans, and thats for me is the key to all of them.