Clean to distorted guitar

[Synth]

I've seen in a lot of videos of Vai and Satch who can switch from playing clean to heavy distortion just by raising their volume on their guitar. How do they do this? I'm guessing its only possible with tube amps?

[Jagori]

It's more or less possible with solid-state amps too... I think it more depends on the particular amp and it's settings than whether it's tube or not. Start with relatively low gain on your amp, and then turn it up bit by bit while seeing how low you have to turn the guitar's volume knob to clean it up. Playing softly helps keep the sound cleaner, too. If you can't do it, you might just not have the gear for it, rather than be doing something wrong.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

That ability to change just by adjusting how loud and hard you play is one of the reasons tube amps are so highly valued. There are some solid state amps tat can sort of fake it, but for the real thing, you need a real tube amp.

[dannthr]

Can't you chain a distortion FX onto a Gate?

You just have a gate set at some x volume and it doesn't send to the distortion until you hit that volume level--that's what gates are for.

[FeryZ]

It is possible to do that. It sounds a bit distorted still but when you turn the volume pot down on your guitar, it slowly cuts out the sound (like one of those lights you can vary the light)

you're thinking "duh, i know that" but if you think about it, it's slowly cutting the signal down, and eventually you get nothing. This applies to the distortion as well, as when you turn down the volume, the distortion goes down but clean still comes out slightly moreso than the distortion. hence you can turn the knob down and still get a clan sound (mind you, itll still be a bit distorted)

Hope I don't sound like a rambling moron :)

[phoenixdk]

You definitely don't need a tube amplifier to achieve that effect. Even a cheap distortion pedal / distortion channel amplifier can do that... I have a lot of distortion pedals and multieffect boards which all pull this off just fine. Just be aware that the higher the pre-gain on the distortion channel, the lower your guitar output volume will have to be. So, low gain means better control but less max gain for instance.

[Majin GeoDooD]

You definitely don't need a tube amplifier to achieve that effect. Even a cheap distortion pedal / distortion channel amplifier can do that... I have a lot of distortion pedals and multieffect boards which all pull this off just fine. Just be aware that the higher the pre-gain on the distortion channel, the lower your guitar output volume will have to be. So, low gain means better control but less max gain for instance.

Yea.. but it's so fun doing that with tube amps. A good tube amp will respond to your picking dynamics extremely well.. turn the volume knob down and play softly for a cleaner tone, but dig in deep and you still get the good creamy dirt!