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There's a misconception prevalent among players who don't play a wide variety of gigs at different venues. They tend to ALWAYS recommend getting clean tones by backing off the volume on the guitar, then adding some dirt by diming the instrument volume into an already overdriven tube amp. Good advice for some settings, but it presumes that a player will always require lower volume for clean tones ...quiet passages, rhythm playing, etc.
At a lot of gigs, it's the loudest parts of the chart that really need to be clean, such as cutting through a horn section with scratchy rhythm, or wa-wa, clean jazzy stuff over horns or a busy organ, or clean country picking.
That's where a Twin shines.
The guitar guy in classic Tower of Power, Bruce Conte, got a great "edge of overdrive, still pretty clean" sound by cranking a blackface Super Reverb. To be heard over a loud group, he was playing at surprisingly high volume. A Super Reverb will do loud and clean, especially a silverface, so will a Pro Reverb, but they're as heavy and unwieldy as a Twin. They break up a little earlier, but still at a very loud volume.
The beauty of a Twin, you have a "clean slate" to work on. Try some different distortion pedals ...there are some great ones out there. I've had good luck with 135 watt ultra-linear Twins, red knob Twins, 212 HD130s (the MusicMan version).
As you play more different venues, you'll value an amp with extra horsepower and great tone. Michael Bloomfield usually used a blackface Twin, then a silverface. Listen to his live stuff for some outta-sight tones.
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