great live sound and guitar amp article from PG

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/27106-tone-tips-volume-dynamics-guitar

i fall into the setting my amp clean and using pedals for drive catagory, this is a really good article and pete thorn is a genius

I like to mix. I have a footswitch for my amp so I just turn the pedal off and the gain channel on for a totally different sound.

I'm probably the only guy on ehre who read this and said "why would you do it another way unless you had to?" I mean, I use pedals, but not as my tone. You guys would laugh at my pedal settings, I swear, you'd be like "what's the point?" But there is a point to it. The amps are doing the real tone work and the dirt pedal(s) are just tightening frequency repsonse when needed, adding a bit of grit and providing an extra boost for me when 10 on my guitar volume isn't enough. I like my guitars and I like my amps. I can happily match the right guitar to the right amp and use nothing else. And that's usually how I do it when I record unless I want fuzz tone. My preset banks on the TC Nova that I use altely are just for gain matching the different guitars, so my hottest guitar has the TS side at like zero gain and by the time I get to the stock strat and 60s tele I'm up to maybe 3 to hit the amp with the same kinda level and I think I shave a hint of treble off the fender settings but ym humbucker patches are wide open or close to it.

To me most gain channels are very much like kicking a drive pedal on. The whole amp is seldom breathing with it if you're at level that retains good power amp headroom for real clean form a clean channel. Same difference.