🎚️ Clean tone

How to get a clean guitar tone

Starting point: gain 0 · bass 6 · mid 6 · treble 6.5 · presence 5.5 (out of 10, from 75 tones)

A clean tone is the amp barely breaking up — clear, dynamic, with the note ringing out. It lives almost entirely in the amp and your picking, not in gain. Set gain at 0–3, let the amp's natural voice and a touch of reverb do the work, and use your volume knob and attack for dynamics. Bright single-coil guitars suit clean tones, but humbuckers do a thick jazzy clean too.

💡 If your clean sounds harsh, pull treble/presence down a little; if it sounds dull, add presence rather than treble. Headroom (a louder, cleaner amp) keeps it from breaking up when you dig in.
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Amps known for clean tones

Fender Twin Reverb (8)Roland JC-120 (6)Vox AC30 (4)Mesa Mark (3)

Famous clean tones

Every Breath You Take (Remastered 2003) — The Police · Sultans of Swing — Dire Straits · Floods — Pantera · Nutshell — Alice In Chains · Planet Caravan — Pantera · Wish You Were Here — Pink Floyd · Comfortably Numb — Pink Floyd · Change (In the House of Flies) — Deftones · Bckyrd — Hot Mulligan · Women In Love... — Van Halen

Community-researched estimates. Adapt any to your gear free at GuitarToneAdapt · amp settings by amp · what every knob does.