volume difference between clean and distortion questions

[kevinjames]

My bass player and I were having a disagreement about this during rehearsal last night. It's of his opinion that the master of each channel be turned down the final output be turned up. I usually have the gain on channel 2 at about 1:00 and the master pegged. He was blaming that on a lot of the feedback problems we have @ rehearsals. So he opted to turn down the master and turn up the gain. I thought there was some loss of tone.

The other issue is that 1/2 our songs are clean and 1/2 distortion or heavy. With a live show coming up, this is still an issue for me. I switch from a good tone with ample volume on channel 2 and then switch to channel 1 clean and have to use the solo boost switch to compensate for the volume loss.

Is this right? Or should I shut off the effects loop in the back and just use the masters on channel 1 and 2 as the final output volume? I haven't tried this yet. I'm just wondering what I'm supposed to do. I'm mainly a guitarist and songwriter and singer. I don't know much about this stuff.

Thanks in advance.

 

[screamingdaisy]

I generally run channel 3 with the channel master at 9:00 and the other two channels adjusted to match. I've never had an issue with channel 1 being too quiet.

I compensate for the drop in volume by cranking the master output back up.

 

[jb's 52]

Here's what I got:

ch 1 vol = 11 - 1:30
ch 2 vol = 9 - 11:00
ch 3 vol = 9 - 11:30

Then I tweak the overall master vol to 9:00.
The range between the channel vary depending on pickups,
singles vs. humbuckers. I generally have to go louder and more
gain with my tele w/singles.