How many of you are using a clean tone for practice and how many a dirty one?
Many of you probably knows this, but maybe not all of you. When you are using dirt (fuzz, od, distortion…) it can mask your errors. Which are usually more noticeable when using a clean guitar tone.
I’ve found that, for many of my practice exercises, it is better if I do it through a clean signal. The other day I tried playing stuff which I thought was sounding clean and precise when using distortion, but afterwards I tried with a clean tone, for my surprise it was not even close.
For sweep arpeggios I do find some gain is good since it helps you to develop a proper muting technique. It also works better to do legato with some gain as well.
But for checking good cordination between hands in alternate, economy and hybrid picking, for example, I do find extremely helpful to use a clean tone so you can really confirm it is being done cleanly and precisely.
For the record, I do know Kiko is not a fan of economy picking, but it does work for me. The things he can do with alternate picking are extremely impressive!
What are your findings? What do you use? Why?