Bob Zaod
Rock Star
- Messages
- 2,872
For a kind of rock-ish project I was in for a while, I used the 2204 Mod as my only amp. Didn't need completely clean tones on that gig, so I was fine with a dirty amp. Had to set the drive very low (usually around 1, sometimes even a bit lower with the Input Pad off), but that resulted in an extremely versatile sound. Pretty much working as a clean sound with the guitar volume turned a notch down and taking the Helix' internal dirt pedals extremely well, I usually used the Teemah for allround riffage and the Top Secret OD (unfortunately always along with an EQ, I wish they came up with a Top Secret OD+ or so...) for some slightly fuzzier goodness and then slapped a Kinky Boost in front for those "mooaaar" moments (and sometimes another Kinky Boost post-amp for even more mooaaar, apparently courtesy of Vernon Reid but I did similar things in my rack days already, as in "adding dirt after the main dirt").
To take that into lead territory, I used what I'm always using since decades (also started that in my rack and loopswitcher days), namely a pre-amp compressor (Vetta Comp from the legacy models, I wish there was a Diamond Compressor, using a clone on my board and it's better than the Vetta Comp...) for some more "meat" and a little boost, a post-amp EQ (final lead level and a little mid boost) and something spatial (sitting in path 2b so I was able to preselect between a bunch of things).
In case I don't need high headroom cleans (which I "unfortunately" often do), that single patch would be good to serve each and every gig.
Yeah I have at least half a dozen songs that I perform where I need crystal cleans.