The Klon does a bit of both. The gain knob is a dual pot. One side is turning up the input gain to a clipping stage. The other side is turning down a clean bypass stage that also has a littl ebit of highpass filtering. There's also a third path that is heavily low passed; like maybe 80 Hz or below. I learned this at work... my day job is weird.steve wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:17 pm I just finished a session where the guitar player had a 5150 for her saturated sound and a Bassman 100 for her "mild" overdrive sound, both running all the time, and it was fantastic. The Bassman, not normally an amp I like in any capacity, preserved the playing dynamics and added a lot of low end muscle to the chords, plus a little string attack to the single-note lines and mutes. On its own, it wasn't a flattering sound and I don't think anybody would like it, but as a kind of adjunct to the saturated sound It worked exceptionally well, adding depth and energy. That surprised me, since I'm used to hearing the same problem you're describing.
When I record bands who have a huge dynamic range (MONO, Neurosis...) I often have to set one mic in place with moderate gain for the quiet parts and another with a pad and lower preamp gain for the heavier parts, then learn the arrangement to the extent necessary to switch off the hi-gain mic so it doesn't blow out the track, or just wait till the take is down and erase it.
As I recall, the legendary Klon Centaur pedal uses both a clean and saturated signal path, and the drive control is actually a blend knob between them, so the "sweet spot" is something akin to having a cleaner amp and a roasted one running simultaneously with a balance struck between them, rather than a circuit being driven harder as the knob goes up.
I was trying to do something like the above example; a scoopy clean amp and my regular Traynor mid-range crunch amp sitting on top. Ironically, I put a Klon style pedal just on the "clean" side to try to get the saturation knee to match with the Traynor. I can kind of get this to work, and the difference in overdrive tonality and amp EQ seems to give the illusion it's cleaner than it actually is. Now I just need it with a drummer.
Sinde note, had anyone tried to find a good drummer in L.A who doesn't want to "make it" and also isn't already in four bands? I mean, I'm pretty cool, right? What the hell man!