Switching between clean/distortion for the Micro Dark?

[adkguy07]

With a good amp and a guitar with decent pickups, it's totally viable.

What the man wrote! It is viable. Agreed; guitar and amp combinations might produce a less than "perfect" clean tone, but "clean" is many times, in the ears of the beholder. I've heard Slash turn down for the Rock ballad "Starlight" and in the quiet parts at a verse's ending I can still hear some "grit" on his tone. For Slash, that's probably
the "clean" that he's after.

So the term "clean" means a variety of cleans....IMHO.

adkguy07

[megalithic]

The Micro Dark doesn't have that much headroom, if you want to dial in a clean sound you have to turn the gain pretty low, the idea being you use a pedal to get distortion.

The regular Micro Terror works much better if you want to do this.

Or you could do some crazy mod like two sets of volume and gain pots and a way to switch between them. Not worth it in my opinion, but some people like to tinker.

[adkguy07]

The Micro Dark doesn't have that much headroom, if you want to dial in a clean sound you have to turn the gain pretty low, the idea being you use a pedal to get distortion.

The regular Micro Terror works much better if you want to do this.

Or you could do some crazy mod like two sets of volume and gain pots and a way to switch between them. Not worth it in my opinion, but some people like to tinker.

Here's what you might try. I put the gain on my own MD up between noon and 1:00pm. The volume (for home use)@ 8:00 am. Lower the guitar's volume control to a point where it still has enough brightness. With my Les Paul neck pickup I could be around 6. Rolling guitar volumes up gets the Orange "grit" that I like. Rolling back down gets my"clean" albeit with a hint of "crunch". The MD might not measure up in loud gig settings when sparkling cleans are called for, but for general use and smaller venues, there should be plenty of volume to cover them; especially if the venue has a first-rate P.A.

adkguy07

[pedecamp]

flashce,

You might want to try amps out at a local store that are single channel such as the Micro Dark.
Try out too,while you're shopping, the multi-channel amps, and see what you are most comfortable with.

What 5810 states makes good sense. Every guitar player should learn to control their tone with guitar volume and tone controls. It might take a bit of effort and a there is a "learning curve" associated with it, but well worth the times spent. The reason I chose the Micro Dark, which I've owned for about a year, is Orange's reputation for tone, the MD's simplicity, cost to operate, effects loop, and power rating.....quiet enough for home use and loud enough for gigs too. I knew that it only had one channel and Dawson's video (along with other videos) proved to me that my decision was a wise one.

Since my original purchase, I've added a TC Electronic Hall Of Fame reverb pedal (for the loop) and to the original PPC108 cab, the PPC112 cab with a Celection V30 inside. It's a pretty simple setup, but allows going from Jazz cleans for chording and single-line playing to any Rock sound that you've heard on the MD videos. There is a bit of solid-state that I've detected every now and then, but as long as there is "note bloom" and chime; it has both by the way, I did make the right decision for myself.

adkguy07

It simply isn't viable to turn down the volume knob while the amp is at a high gain setting and expect to have crystal clear cleans though.

No you'll get a "cleanish" tone, nothing crystal clean. If that's good enough for you then the amp will work for your needs. Otherwise look at a channel switching Orange like the Rocker 30, TH30, Dual Terror. Micro Darks are cheap enough, get two and set one clean and the other dirty. That's all I got, good luck.