Setting Amp Gain: What to Know
The year is 2025.
The pedalboard is finally complete. All 9 of your reverbs are MIDI-synced to your 7 delays, and your perfectly-curated drive section is ready to go to work.
You fire up the ol’ spaceship. Plug in.
And… it sounds like garbage. Disappointing.
This was the number one problem I used to have when it came to amp modeling systems like Tonex, Kemper, and Quad Cortex.
It really can be difficult to strike a balance between an awesome, full-sounding amp tone, and leaving yourself enough headroom for all the effects coming after it.
So, is there a magic approach that gets good results every time?
Personally, I’ve heard a lot of different approaches across my 15 years of guitar playing, and I’m going to do my best to present them all to you so you can make the best decision for your needs and your rig.
Approach #1: Clean Amp/No Breakup
#1 is probably the most common approach I’ve seen while traveling with other bands, partially because it is the most readily available to everyone. In fact, you can try this with any amp, regardless of if it’s a modeler for a pedalboard or an analog solution.
The approach is simple: to avoid distorting the preamp channel of the amplifier (creating that exploding sound when you stack wet effects into the amp), set the amp clean and achieve your desired gain using pedals.
This approach works well for people who have multiple overdrive pedals, or at least one pedal that heavily colors the tone and EQ of the guitar. Tube Screamers, specific boosts with adjustable EQs, Klon-style pedals, or Nobels ODR-based overdrives can all do this relatively easily.
A benefit of this method is how much you can drive your effects into the amp. If you want bright, clean, loud guitar tones, this is a really good approach. This works for all styles as well.
Personally, I most commonly see country players and cover musicians using this method more than anyone, but the rare worship guitar player may try this if they have the resources to forego amp-based breakup.
However, if you like the “push” or “sag” of the amp distorting, you will lose the inherent character of your amplifier by using this method.
Usually though, most people have a clean amp that doesn’t achieve this sound regardless of how they set it, so this is a very common method of gain-staging for gigging musicians, musicians who use shared backline (typically a clean Fender-style amp is provided), or musicians who have multiple overdrive options.
Approach #2: Edge of Breakup/Light Gain
If you’re a worship player or wanting to become one, you’ve probably heard the term “edge of breakup” tossed around at least once in a soundcheck.
This tends to be the most common approach for players who are using a more “vintage” style amp similar to a VOX AC15/AC30 or early 50’s to early 70’s Fender amps. These amps in particular are ubiquitous for their “sweet spot” breakup tones.
To translate for you, we are splitting the difference between two extremes:
No Gain - “wow this amp sounds lifeless and sad”
And:
Full Gain - “the universe is collapsing in on itself”
We’re trying to achieve:
Edge of Breakup Gain: “wow, this is the perfect balance of light crunch and exciting clean!”
This is actually really easy to do, and it doesn’t require spending $4,000 on one of these vintage amps.
Simply pick your amp type on your favorite modeler, and strum through it a few times.
You want a medium strum to sound mostly clean with a little bit of dirtiness, but when you dig in, the amps should get a bit more dirty.
From there, the setup is mainly subjective. Usually it’s as simple as setting a suitable output level and EQ’ing to taste.
Reasons why this is so good for worship is the setup of your wet effects. Most players set their wet FX to feed into their amp solution. Meaning, the wet effects will break up the amplifier with your drives.
This can make your lead and ambient playing sound much more three-dimensional and can help to defeat the ‘“in the box” sound that many modelers can produce due to their digital nature.
If you’re still struggling with your modeler sounding small, try throwing a very short reverb (under 600ms decay) at a relatively low mix (under 35%) after your amp solution to create a room sound for it to sit in. Adjust to taste!
Approach #3 (scary): FULL GAIN FROM AMP
WARNING: This can be very style-specific.
A final approach if your amp solution can handle it is fully amp-derived gain, meaning we are not deriving our gain from dirt pedals. This usually takes a very high wattage amplifier (Friedman, Peavey, Bogner, Marshall, Fender Bassman) that can handle high-gain preamp and power amp distortion.
These amps are stout - you can throw immense amounts of level and gain at them from the start, and they will not break up! Hence, if you take this approach, it is going to be very loud before these amps start to get dirty.
A benefit of these amps is that many of them come with foot switches and extra channels to control the volume and gain level, with many of them offering a “clean” channel that bypasses the aggressive distortion found in their main circuits. Many also offer a “solo boost” or “level boost” that helps to replace the dirt pedals many players use to push themselves forward in a mix.
Styles that usually benefit from this are heavier styles like metal, hard rock, classic rock, 90’s grunge, and really any variant of rock or metal today. They lend themselves to high wattage solutions and many of the most popular songs in the style used this method to achieve their searing tones.
If you use this method, I can pretty much guarantee you that your wet effects will be heavily distorted unless you put them after the amplifier or use a physical amp’s effects loop to get them out of the distortion channel.
Bottom Line: 5 Gallon Bucket Rule
Consider your amp to be a 5 gallon bucket - eventually, you’ll pour so much stacked drives, stacked delays, modulation, and reverb into it that it will overflow.
When it comes to amp tone, you can only fit so much information into an amp before it simply can’t handle it.
As you add effects, be cautious of this rule. Adding may mean you have to take away some or part of another effect to make room for the new.
No matter what you choose for your setup, remember:
Honor God
Love Others
Die to Yourself
Have Fun!