The DC-3 is a great little amp. I love mine. The best place to start is to set all both gain controls and all the tone controls on 5. Then tweek to taste. It actually sounds realy good with everything set just like that to my ears (channel masters will have to be set to compensate for differences in channel volumes - I've found channel 2 to be much hotter than 1, as I guess should be expected.
My favorite clean settings with single coil equipped guitars are gain at about 6 or 6.5 depending on how much bite I want, treble 5.5, mids at 4, bass at 6.5, presence at 3.5, with the channel master at 5. At home that's plenty loud with the output master on 1.5. Ar gigs I run between 2.5 and 4 depending on the situation. On 4, it's loud as hell.
In channel 2 I set my gain at about 7 .5, treble at about 6, mid at 4.5, bass at 6.5 and presence at about 4.5. The channel master is usually set to about 3. With a low output master setting I get great lead sounds at bedroom levels, but the thing really starts to sing when you set the output master past 3.
It's a very forgiving amp, and almost any setting will sound good, except extremes. I only use the graphic in channel 2 and use a traditional "v" shape. It's always on in channel 2, so for rhythm playing I dial back the guitar volume. Turn up to burn my solos out. I just love this amp.
