DISTORTION and TONE

   If you want good tone with screaming distortion, saturate your preamp section (gain) less and use your output section more.  Too much preamp distortion will turn your sound into foam and cost the substance, which is where good rock tone lives.  A lot of your amp’s character and tone comes from the output section; this is why small amps are becoming popular.  You can crank one of these little guys up into its sweating zone so it’s saying “ahh” without blowing out windows and the singer or soundman won’t throw shoes at you.

   If your rig is 50 watts or more, consider getting a power soak of some kind so you can engage the output section.  And see how little distortion you can actually get by with…you might be surprised.  Your ideas and expression matter to the listening ear, and they usually get conveyed much better with less distortion, like more of an ‘edge’ setting.  The rhythmic articulation and accented notes will come out more, too…and that rocks.
   I should mention that all of this assumes you have a real amp, with tubes.  If you’re using solid state or software modeling, I can’t help you.

More to come.