Just curious what other people think about the differences between these types of OD/Dist & also the practicality of them all in club settings...

1. power amp overdrive, (cranked tube amp)

2. pre-amp distortion (pre-amp tube saturation at lower volumes)

3. clean amp with pedals for OD or Distortion.

I like overdriven & clean tones. When I say overdrive think in terms of Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, & Early EVH. I don't like todays harsh toneless distortion. Classic rock overdrive tone is where it's at for me. It sounds real because it is real.

Most often people agree that classic rock tone was made up of cranked Marshalls, HiWatts, Vox amps & Fenders. I personally love the clean tone of all black face Fenders. I also really love the crunch of a cranked Marshall JTM45 & a 50w Plexi.

However, a cranked 50w amp would be way too much in the average club setting. So I look at it like this. A good Fender tube amp with a quality overdrive pedal will give me the "holy grail" clean tone that Fender is known for but will also give me something "paint chip" close to a cranked British sounding amp. Maybe not dead on, but close.

On the other side of it, a Marshall will give me that classic crunch, but will not back off into the realm of Fender clean.

It seems to me that this is the reason that the Fender / Overdrive pedal combination is so widely used.

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to crank a 22w amp in a club or use a 50w amp with pedals for overdrive.

It's obvious that there are two schools of thought on getting overdrive.

I'm interested in what some of you gigging guitarists have to say about how you do things...