Blending clean and dirty. One amp?

[Gatter91]

Right, this is just a weird hypothesis I came up with whilst daydreaming and GASing at work today and correct me if I'm completely wrong, but is there any way of getting a clean and dirty sound of the same amp.... At the same time??

I know that a few guitarists (especially in the studio) overlay a clean and dirty guitar to give a bit more body and presence, or even use a clean amp and a dirty amp together in a live setup, but is it possible to split the signal before the distortion stage on your pedalboard, distort/ run effects through one line with the other completely bypassing any effects and then feed them both back into the amp (set clean) together? At least is there any reason why this could not happen? Or has anyone tried it and had any worthy effect out of it?

Hmmm....

 

[1955]

If you set the amp to break up you can use your guitar volume knob for both, though this isn't answering your question, sorry.

 

[uriah1]

a) Sparkle drive Mod (Blend clean / crunch)
b) Barber launch pad...run chan 1 clean out and chan 2 dirty out to amp
if not 2 channel amp, sum them.
c) Basic A/b/y box

In days of yore, I would run a marshall super left stage and a tremolux right stage split
in stereo (dirty) and (clean)...was great...bu t, too much work for the return...

 

[1955]

At the same time. - That's making my brain hurt.

 

[MillerMe]

a) Sparkle drive Mod (Blend clean / crunch)
b) Barber launch pad...run chan 1 clean out and chan 2 dirty out to amp
if not 2 channel amp, sum them.
c) Basic A/b/y box

/QUOTE]

D) T Rex Alberta

I love my Sparkle Drive Mod. Controlling the mix of clean and dirty is as close to what I think you're looking for.

The a/b/y would only work if you had two:

Guitar > a/b/y1 > effects > a/b/y2 (reversed)
Guitar > a/b/y1 >>>>>>>> a/b/y2 (reversed)

 

[Justinvs]

I've done it with my Suprer Reverb, dirt pedal into one channel, clean into the other. It works, but the Dirt sound tends to overpower the clean one.

 

[twangjeff]

Doing it with one amp wouldn't be ideal, because most of the time clean and dirty amps are going to be set differently to be optimal for each application. For instance you may want a closed back 4x12 cab with greenbacks for dirty, but 2x10 Jensen's with an open back for clean. If you dirty the clean amp it still won't sound like a Plexi, and if you clean up a Plexi it still won't sound like a Vibrolux. You get where I'm going with that?

Having said that, there are lots of great, "In between," amps that do a semi clean semi dirty sound like a Matchless, Dr Z, Tweed Deluxe, Blues Breaker, etc.

 

[ToneShark]

A pedal won't really do it the same way two amps would, but if you have an amp with two channels that are in-phase and can set one up clean and one dirty (a Matchless DC30 is a GREAT amp for this), an A/B/Y switcher is almost required equipment. When I had the Bad Cat Black Cat 30R, that's something I liked a lot - 12AX7 channel set clean, EF86 channel dirty, and then blending them both with a stereo delay. I really love the complexity of the tone you get with one dirty amp and one clean amp both on all the time. Used to use a few different stereo rigs just like that for that very purpose.

 

[SirJackdeFuzz]

Easiest way of doing it - imho = get two amps.

Get one amp that you like the dirt of, and one amp that you like the clean tones of.

In my case : Marshall Class 5 for durt & Fender Excelsior for big phat cleans.

I just split my guitar signal with either an Epi BB King 335 (it has stereo out), or with my fav delay pedal.
With the Epi BB King ES-335, the bridge pu goes to the Marshall, and the neck pu signal to the Excelsior.
In the delay pedal's case, the clean amp gats the delay signal and the "un-delayed" signal goes to the durt.

 

[ASC67]

Look for a old Peavey Renown , they do just that with a blend feature. Clean on one channel and dirty on the other and blend to taste.

 

[montanatanner]

I think 2 amps would serve you best. In my case, my Roland JC77 handles the cleans, my H&K Tubemeister 18 handles the dirt. I can switch to either or both amps using a Radial Engineering ABY box. Another benefit of running 2 amps is the great, room-filling, stereo sound you can get.

 

[Count]

I do it with two amps using a A-B-Y splitter switch (Alctron SW-21), allows you to switch from one amp to the other or run both at once. Works well switching from clean to dirty on one through a footswitch and keeping the other amp on clean only.

 

[PinewoodRo]

For a while I ran my bass into a splitter then took one side into the amp clean (it was a big Ashdown combo) and the other through a multiFX and into the effects loop return (on the back). The A/B/Y splitter meant I could switch the FX on or off and I adjusted the tone and level of the FX using the controls on the pedal board. Mixing clean in with dirty is a big help for getting useable grungy bass sounds but carrying two bass rigs was not an option for me. You could do a similar thing with a two-channel guitar amp?

 

[BobbyZ]

This reminds me I need to see what happened to the Vodoo Labs amp switcher I ordered localy almost two months ago.
It can do four amps and if I would'a just ordered online I'd tell you more about it BECAUSE I would'a had it a long time ago !

 

[keithb7]

By chance I was just doing this 2 amp thing just a few days ago. I was A/B-ing my 5E3 and 5F2A clones. Then I decided to run them in stereo through a delay pedal. I used my 5F2A for crunch and 5E3 for bottom end thump clean. Wow. Things really sounded great!

 

[B.J.TELE]

3 in 1 in one amp

If you"re in the market for a used amp, and there is still a few floating around out there, pick up an early 80"s Randall RG80 head or combo amp. These were solid state, but way ahead of their time and fooled tube purists, and are still highly revered. The amp was two channel and the two channels could be combined, with or without the footswitch. Channel one was darker and cleaner, though could be made to break up significantly. Channel two was the Fenderesque channel and distortion channel. This is esentially a 3 channel amp and your only limitations to combined channel sounds were your imagination!

 

[jefrs]

The MXR Bass DI+ Distortion Pedal is a weird thing.

It has a clean channel with TMB, and then it has a distortion effect almost as a separate entity (with a noise gate). It is intended as a Bass DI box and as such could be used straight to desk or PA as an amp sim.

Thing is, it has a blend knob which, erm, blends the clean and dirty. Now you can set the noise gate so the distortion shuts off at fairly high level, so the attack can be dirty, and the decay cleans up.

 

[jefrs]

Another way to do it is to run the FX-distorted sound into the B-input of a stereo reverb where it is combined with clean on the A-input and output as mono to the amp. Clean attack, distorted delay echoes. Novelty effect.

An old school 2-channel amp will do it. Literally two channels, two separate inputs with their own controls, usually intended for two instruments at once.

Or two amps, because a clean & dirty sound seems to like being separated.
This (bi-amping) sounds a lot bigger than a single amp twice the power of either one. Usually two different amps of similar power are used side by side (not across the sound stage). This has been successfully used many times by many players, perhaps most famously by John Entwistle, who separated treble and bass frequencies. You can do it clean & dirty or ping-pong tremolo, whatever.

 

[nosuch]

My Sessionette 90 can do it, I can switch clean, dirty or both.

 

[ScottJPatrick]

/\ this /\ , or find a used sessionette 75, not a blend but can get both channels at the same time.