George - My favorite onstage is the normal channel of the Super Reverb with everything cranked to 10. Ditto for the Champ at home. But the super on 10 only works if it's a loud band...
Played a gig a couple of weeks ago, had trouble getting the normal channel to sound decent. I've been using the reverb channel set for good tone, and normal channel for a different tone so I get two distinct sounds from one amp with an A/B switch. Having a rough night anyway, had to turn both volumes to 10 since it was outside and a loud band, never got a good sound from the normal channel while the reverb channel was sounding great. Got frustrated and finally in the 3rd set turned bass & treble to 10 too. No mids on the normal channel. I usually set it differently. First time I hit the A/B switch to do a lead, no effects boxes just the normal channel, keyboard player looked at me and grinned, said OH YEAH and we were off and rolling. Bass player was grinning at me too. It sounded great. Never used a pedal the rest of the night except for rhythm parts that needed the Ibanez SD-9 for distortion. ZZ Top songs etc. Same as my Fender Champ cranked to 10, it sounded fantastic, no need for any pedals, the lead sound I was after was right there. I could have made it with nothing but guitar and cable if I didn't need the SD-9 for specific things...No straight amp I know of will get the heavy distortion sound of a pedal. My MX will, but it's not a straight amp, it's a 2 channel with solid state preamp with some very good distortion and saturation, but onstage it's very hard to control. Touch the knob a tiny bit and it's too loud...sounds great at home for practice, even at bedroom volume, but for onstage use, either amp will do and the overdrive and SD-9 have to be there...I normally only use the clean channel of the MX onstage, pedals for distortion or overdrive.
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