How to use volume pedal as a clean channel

Smash

Smash

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I was talking with @Racerxrated about this the other day, and i just want to kind of illustrate it. The sound quality is trash here as I was going straight with phone, but you can get the gist of what I am talking about and how I run my rig.

I have the minimum set to where i get a "clean" I can lower it to where it gets more spanky clean, but i hate that shit, so the illustration is just about how to clean it up enough for sustaining single notes not to get muddy.

 
VonBonfire said:
It does make sense. Good video. Nice tone too!!
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Thanks. That was pretty low volume (100 dbs), so the Eq didn't really fill in. But I'm glad you understood what I was going for. I guess I could have showed the min pot's capabilities in retrospect.

My favorite part of the video is at the end where i am moving my toes and it is making reality shift. I just hope somewhere Reza is watching that and getting his kicks
 
@braintheory was just talking about not caring whether or not an amp is dynamic, and it is a good point for high gain. The gain compresses the signal, so if you have a true high gain amp, it can never really be as dynamic as a clean amp.

However, where i set the minimum for the volume makes it to where i need to pick light still or I overshoot the level that I am looking for (because the amp is kind of dynamic for a high gain amp). That is also illustrated a few times unintentionally. And it makes sense, the whole point of what i am trying to do is minimize the signal that is hitting the front of the amp. By picking harder, I fight that minimum I set.
 
Smash said:
@braintheory was just talking about not caring whether or not an amp is dynamic, and it is a good point for high gain. The gain compresses the signal, so if you have a true high gain amp, it can never really be as dynamic as a clean amp.

However, where i set the minimum for the volume makes it to where i need to pick light still or I overshoot the level that I am looking for (because the amp is kind of dynamic for a high gain amp). That is also illustrated a few times unintentionally. And it makes sense, the whole point of what i am trying to do is minimize the signal that is hitting the front of the amp. By picking harder, I fight that minimum I set.
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I care about dynamics, but how an amp cleans up with a volume roll back is not what I mean by dynamic. I mean more like how receptive it is to right hand picking. Like how it can sound more or less aggressive/attacky, gainy, sharp/soft, stuff like depending how you pick, while most compressed modern high gain amps aren’t as receptive and can sound more or less the same no matter how you pick, yet some of those amps sometimes still can be pretty good at cleaning up with volume roll backs. To me those still aren’t amps with good dynamics. Larry’s and my IIC (not +) are good at what I mean by this with dynamics. I never bothered trying to clean them up with the volume knob, so have no idea there lol. Maybe they’re great at that for all I know. Just not relevant for my needs. I just use the best clean amp I can for clean sounds
 
Back in the day we all did the "penny stack". Get a EB volume pedal, crank your amp up and then stack pennies as you push it down to clean. Super Glue the pennies at that level and then put whatever in that measure. I used actual pennies
 
braintheory said:
I care about dynamics, but how an amp cleans up with a volume roll back is not what I mean by dynamic. I mean more like how receptive it is to right hand picking. Like how it can sound more or less aggressive/attacky, gainy, sharp/soft, stuff like depending how you pick, while most compressed modern high gain amps aren’t as receptive and can sound more or less the same no matter how you pick, yet some of those amps sometimes still can be pretty good at cleaning up with volume roll backs. To me those still aren’t amps with good dynamics. Larry’s and my IIC (not +) are good at what I mean by this with dynamics. I never bothered trying to clean them up with the volume knob, so have no idea there lol. Maybe they’re great at that for all I know. Just not relevant for my needs. I just use the best clean amp I can for clean sounds
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So the point is picking lightly or hard does the same thing as rolling back volume vs full. It hits the front end in different ways. That is the dynamics just different ways to go about it. But I understand. A high gain amp is never going to be as dynamic as a class A or clean amp with power section controlling distortion.

The best way to kind of think about this is the more gain you are using, the less your attack matters, but a lot of us still use a ton of attack when trying to goose the front end...

However, when you have the volume rolled back, then the attack matters a lot more, because you can actually push the front end of the amp unintentionally because the compression is automatically lower because of the lack of gain, if that makes sense.
 
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John Frum said:
Back in the day we all did the "penny stack". Get a EB volume pedal, crank your amp up and then stack pennies as you push it down to clean. Super Glue the pennies at that level and then put whatever in that measure. I used actual pennies
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This is genius and probably where lehle got the idea for the min pot.
 
7704A said:
What color swimtrunks do you think EVH was wearing during recording? Could that be the secret to getting his tone? What swimtrunks was his amp's choke wearing?
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I am going to say this, and I want you to listen. You are fucking on to something. What I want, what @DanTravis62 wants...HELL what everyone wants is another thread discussing EVH toan and how the fuck he got it.

Well fucking done sir. This is thought provoking shit
 
Smash said:
So the point is picking lightly or hard does the same thing as rolling back volume vs full. It hits the front end in different ways. That is the dynamics just different ways to go about it. But I understand. A high gain amp is never going to be as dynamic as a class A or clean amp with power section controlling distortion.

The best way to kind of think about this is the more gain you are using, the less your attack matters, but a lot of us still use a ton of attack when trying to goose the front end...

However, when you have the volume rolled back, then the attack matters a lot more, because you can actually push the front end of the amp unintentionally because the compression is automatically lower because of the lack of gain, if that makes sense.
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This again though is not what I meant. Yes with clean or NMV type amps you can shape the gain a lot more than high gain amps by how hard or soft you play, but even many of those style of amps if they’re not great examples can be very homogeneous in the sense that it’s not very receptive to nuances in your picking or attack, but just how clean/overdriven it gets from how hard you play. There’s much more to it than just gain levels in what I mean by dynamic. On the other hand, with the Larry’s even if you dial in stupid amount of gain beyond where I’d want to even go it’s very receptive to the nuances in how I pick or attack the string that even most fully clean amps wouldn’t have going on. I’m not talking about gain levels here or know exactly how to verbalize this, but it’s more what I mean by an amp being dynamic or having good touch sensitivity. I guess I mean expressive nuances in one’s playing (or lack thereof depending on the player), but not just simply how hard or soft they’re playing
 
Smash said:
I am going to say this, and I want you to listen. You are fucking on to something. What I want, what @DanTravis62 wants...HELL what everyone wants is another thread discussing EVH toan and how the fuck he got it.

Well fucking done sir. This is thought provoking shit
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ITS THE TOAN CANCER IN HIS MOUTH THAT'S WHAT GIVES THAT JUICY GREASY SQUISH
 
braintheory said:
This again though is not what I meant. Yes with clean or NMV type amps you can shape the gain a lot more than high gain amps by how hard or soft you play, but even many of those style of amps if they’re not great examples can be very homogeneous in the sense that it’s not very receptive to nuances in your picking or attack, but just how clean/overdriven it gets from how hard you play. There’s much more to it than just gain levels in what I mean by dynamic. On the other hand, with the Larry’s even if you dial in stupid amount of gain beyond where I’d want to even go it’s very receptive to the nuances in how I pick or attack the string that even most fully clean amps wouldn’t have going on. I’m not talking about gain levels here or know exactly how to verbalize this, but it’s more what I mean by an amp being dynamic or having good touch sensitivity. I guess I mean expressive nuances in one’s playing (or lack thereof depending on the player), but not just simply how hard or soft they’re playing
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Ok. That clears it up a bit. I strictly think of dynamics as gain. But yes. I havent played a Larry, but i know that there are heavily compressed amps, such as evh 5150 where you have less touch sensitivity than the open style amps I mostly frequent.

Also, you are promising a ton of clips to people. You need to be sending some my way. I didnt even know we were in the open about Larrys yet
 
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