Best pedal friendly amps?

[Gainmonger]

Hey friends.
It is more an inquiry than a question (motivated by curiosity really)
According to you, what are the best amps to use with distortion or fuzz pedals and what are your go to settings?
I mainly use fuzz pedals on super clean channels to keep the original sound of the stompbox without adding any unwanted compression from the amp.
I've tried a bunch of amps,  rectifiers, Vht (now fryette), marshall, jet city (etc) and had been disappointed
But in my opinion, the best around is definitely the randall diavlo 45.
The hot channel is just ok to my taste (lacks precision and treble) but the clean channel is awesome and can take huge amount of boost without cranking.
any pedal sounds marvelously, especially distortion types.
So what's your fave?

[GibsonGM]

I think it depends on what kind of music you're playing, honestly.  "Gainmonger", lol...sounds like you might want more shred than what I do (classic rock...Framton-y Hendrix-y Aerosmith-y up to Slash-sounding stuff).   For what I'm doing, I use...of all amps...a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.

It is a pretty clean amp with TONS of headroom, so when I use a pedal with it (clean channel), of course I get a little compression from hitting the amp hard, but it doesn't fuzz out and 'lock up' in that sick square wave crap sound.   As you up the dirt, the natural tube tone stays about the same.     Bass on 4, mids 4, treble usually near full up, presence 1/2 way.

For blues and cleaner stuff (think Santana or Doobies...) the dirty channel works fine, and I boost for leads with a Mosfet boost or TS (or a Timmy...) with drive on 0, which overdrives the pre a little so you get more drive when soloing, and level.  Again, the lack of overdriving the power amp keeps the tone from going into junk.

Hope that's helpful...a little old-school, but it gives a tone I like and is repeatable no matter where I play!   I got sick of playing around for too long trying to get a good sound on stage.   Plug in and play with this setup...

[Dmian]

Apparently, Fenders are pretty good as their clean channels are well suited for pedals.
I'm getting a Boss Katana 100 Head, because I don't want to deal with tubes atm. The clean channel sounds great, and you have 55 Boss pedals included, so, a win-win for me.

[patrick398]

Yeah i'd say fender amps too. Definitely a personal preference, i love their clean sounds. I have a '77 Pro Reverb which has seemingly infinite headroom. Takes pedals extremely well

[Joncaster]

Certain Marshall circuits seem to work well with tube screamers and boosts, and others sound terrible. I think the jtm45 type circuits are better for that than a jcm800 type, in my onstage times using house amps.

I have a feeling it's to do with how the Amp responds to high frequencies (and how the speaker responds too), and the biasing of each stage. I have reservations about cold clipper stages, not sure if they help or hinder.

Compression can help I think (within the pre and power sections), and the right amount of nfb (although Vox ac30's take pedals well sometimes, as long as you use the phase inverter HF cut judiciously).

And the tonestack will have a major effect. Might turn ugly scooping 500hz in a Fender and boosting 1khz with a rangemaster, but a Marshall scooping at 800hz will fill out nicely.

Maybe a Hiatt circuit would work nice with pedals?

[Joncaster]

There's a huge Marshall jcm800 at work i use to test sometimes, and the best tone setting on that is a flat response, treble and presence at 0, mids all the way up, bass at 2.

[Ben N]

There's no one answer to this. It depends not only on the style of music, but also on the overall gain structure of your signal chain and the eq of the pedals.  It's the old story--to most ears, a mid-humper (TS, Klon, Bluesbreaker, OCD) sounds fine into a mid-scooped Fender or Vox, but overbearing and thin into a bass-restricted, mids-flat or boosted amp like a Marshall. A very scooped pedal, like a classic Big Muff, will be ridiculous into an already scooped amp.
A lot has been said about sending gainy pedals through a clean channel, and all of that is true. And yet, classic fuzzes are known to need to be fed to an already overdriven amp to sound right. And the "best" (i.e. smoothest) way to use many overdrives is with the level up and the drive down, into a "clean" amp that is already at the edge of breakup, so that the pedal, the preamp and the power amp all contribute small increases in saturation for an overall smooth sound.
I do think it's fair to generalize that small combo amps (5-15 watts) generally don't take well to a lot of gain coming in, because they turn to mush. They sound great by themselves because they are already at their limits--of gain, and especially of bass response.
My personal favorite is an early 70s Fender Bassman. This thing overdrives beautifully by itself if you crank it, but has enough headroom and volume at moderate settings to take pedals beautifully. Either way, it sounds mighty.

[diydave]

Jcm800 pre-amp (full mids, bass about 2 and treble depending how big the stage / room is) into an 18Watt tube-amp (ef86 channel).
To crank things up: a powerbooster (or similar boost-pedal) to get tube-distortion.

Rarely use a fuzz, it doesn't go well with the sound of the band i'm playing in.
But I do love a germanium fuzz into the jcm800 pre-amp.

[nocentelli]

Here's a video of J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr explaining that although he uses loads of huge Marshall tube amp stacks on stage they are all set pretty much clean, and his "dirty amp" sound comes from either one or two Boxes of Rock, which he then plays his numerous fuzz pedals through for solos etc, i.e (fuzzes) ->BoR -> (BoR) -> clean marshall.

His idea seems to be all about maximising dynamics despite severe compression of extreme fuzzes like the BMP. Personally, I play through a clean sessionette solidstate combo, but I usually have a timmy OD set to very low gain on all the time for a bit of character: I notice that my fuzzes definitely sound better through the timmy than straight into the clean amp, and way better than the fuzzes into the (mosfet clipping?) overdrive channel of the sessionette.

[Joncaster]

Doesn't J use JC120's as well? And another guy, can't remember (Alain Johannes maybe), uses Roland's as the Amp clean platform.

[Danich_ivanov]

After playing and gigging for 10 years or so i found "JTM/JCM" series, whether it is 45, 800, 900, 2000 to be the best and most consistent with whatever I had on my board, and my gain levels vary from Funky/Clean to Sludge/Black metal (Big muff boosted with an overdrive).

[Gainmonger]

After playing and gigging for 10 years or so i found "JTM/JCM" series, whether it is 45, 800, 900, 2000 to be the best and most consistent with whatever I had on my board, and my gain levels vary from Funky/Clean to Sludge/Black metal (Big muff boosted with an overdrive).

isn't an overdrive cascading into a bigmuff too noisy?
Before turning toward fuzz loaded clean channels, i used to put a big muff right in front of a tube works es 120 hot channel.
A bit noisy but i've never heard a muff-combo this heavy and good.

[Danich_ivanov]

After playing and gigging for 10 years or so i found "JTM/JCM" series, whether it is 45, 800, 900, 2000 to be the best and most consistent with whatever I had on my board, and my gain levels vary from Funky/Clean to Sludge/Black metal (Big muff boosted with an overdrive).

isn't an overdrive cascading into a bigmuff too noisy?
Before turning toward fuzz loaded clean channels, i used to put a big muff right in front of a tube works es 120 hot channel.
A bit noisy but i've never heard a muff-combo this heavy and good.

I can be, but it depends on a many, many things. I have a good psu (t-rex chameleon), patches are made out of tusker cables with amphenol jacks, pedals are catalinbread manx loaghtan and zvex distortron, both set not very loud, gain pots do not go past noon, every digital pedal feeds from isolated output from chameleon, and as a result i have a very little amount of noise in general, while having a tons of gain. It's all about using good stuff and experimenting. 

[Gainmonger]

After playing and gigging for 10 years or so i found "JTM/JCM" series, whether it is 45, 800, 900, 2000 to be the best and most consistent with whatever I had on my board, and my gain levels vary from Funky/Clean to Sludge/Black metal (Big muff boosted with an overdrive).

isn't an overdrive cascading into a bigmuff too noisy?
Before turning toward fuzz loaded clean channels, i used to put a big muff right in front of a tube works es 120 hot channel.
A bit noisy but i've never heard a muff-combo this heavy and good.

I can be, but it depends on a many, many things. I have a good psu (t-rex chameleon), patches are made out of tusker cables with amphenol jacks, pedals are catalinbread manx loaghtan and zvex distortron, both set not very loud, gain pots do not go past noon, every digital pedal feeds from isolated output from chameleon, and as a result i have a very little amount of noise in general, while having a tons of gain. It's all about using good stuff and experimenting. 

you convinced me at "tons of gain" 

[njkmonty]

JC 120 !