Today's guitar amplifiers often come with an amazing array of controls. These controls are of tremendous use, but can confuse many guitarists. This article will help explain how to get great rock sounds out of a modern three-channel tube guitar amplifier quickly.

One could be excused for thinking the secret to finding the right amp sound lies in the tone controls. But the real place to focus your attention is with the volume and drive controls. Once you have that settled in, you put the finishing touches on your sound with the equalizer controls (treble, mid, bass). So let's get your three-channel amp dialed in quickly:

1) First the clean channel (channel 1). Turn the master volume on the amp all the way down to zero. Set all eq knobs to five out of ten on the clean channel. Set the volume on this channel to 7 and the gain to 4. Now slowly bring the master volume up to about 4. Play a few notes. The sound should be nice and clean, with just an almost-imperceptible amount of drive to it. Nice. Then adjust the eq knobs to fix any brightness or mudiness.

2) Next the crunch channel (channel 2). Like before, turn the master volume on the amp all the way down to zero. Then set all of the knobs on the crunch channel to five out of ten. Then bring up the master volume on the amp to 4. Play a few notes. You may want to put the gain at 6, and the volume at about 4. It depends on how overdriven you want channel 2 to be. Then channel-switch between channels 1 and 2. Balance the volumes between the channels by moving each of their respective volume knobs a little bit. It shouldn't be a drastic change in volume between the channels. Rather, the character of the sound itself should switch between clean and crunch.

3) Now the distortion/lead channel (channel 3). As before, turn the maser volume on the amp down to zero. Set all of the tone knobs to five. Set the gain to 7 or 8, set the volume to about 5. Slowly bring up the master volume to about 4. Play a few notes and listen. This should be quite a screaming sound (make sure your guitar itself is on the bridge pickup, and all volume and tone controls on the guitar are maxed out at 10). Make some final eq adjustments. 5 on the bass, 4 on the mids and 6 or 7 on the treble will get you toward a nice screaming lead sound. Then switch between channels 2 and 3, and adjust the volume knob on channel 3 as needed. Channel 3 should be a bit louder than channel 2, but not twice as loud or anything like that. Like before, you are looking for a change in sound character, not a cavernous change in volume when you switch channels.

Finally, turn your master volume on your guitar amplifier up to about 5 or 6. At this point, all channels should sound awesome. You will be getting the same basic sound character as when you were on 4 for the master channel. But it will be louder, fuller, and the big power tubes in the amp will be working hard for you at this level. Be careful. It's going to be loud at this point. You should be in all-tube guitar sound nirvana at this point.

Obviously, everybody has their own styles. Guitar is a very unique and individualistic pursuit. But if you are having trouble getting good sounds out of your nice tube amp and don't know why, give this process a try. I often find my otherwise-intelligent musician friends struggling to get their amps to sound good. I walk over, and quickly dial them in. I follow more-or-less the same process every time. It shouldn't be that hard to get a great sound from your tube guitar amp. They are meant to sound great. Happy playing!