Is the VH4's clean channel as bad as everyone says?

[JasonEldon]

Hey guys I'm debating between getting the Diezel VH4 or the Herbert. Ive listened to every sound clip/recording I have found and read every review i could find on both amps.

Saying that i am a rock/hard rock player and play allot of clean wet delay/reverbie style stuff. I find the VH4 channels 2-4 are more my style and less aggressive than the Herbert. But I need a good clean channel, its a must. So my question to all you Diezel professionals.....is the clean channel on the VH4 really THAT bad? Will i have to run a Vox or Fender combo for cleans or can you get away with using it?

Any opinions would be amazing!

All the best ,

Jay

 

[glassjaw7]

I really enjoyed playing the VH4 clean ch. It not Fender full and clean, but a little thinner sounding. Still a great, chimey clean with spank and gets a little hairy when pushed. Definitely better than the cleans on many other channel switchers.

Now 5150 cleans, THOSE are shit in comparison FWIW.

 

[JasonEldon]

I really enjoyed playing the VH4 clean ch. It not Fender full and clean, but a little thinner sounding. Still a great, chimey clean with spank and gets a little hairy when pushed. Definitely better than the cleans on many other channel switchers.

Now 5150 cleans, THOSE are shit in comparison FWIW.

thanks for the reply man! Thats good to hear because im really sold on the VH4. I know what your talking about with the 5150 cleans my god they were the worst...well 2nd worst to the Bogner Uberschall Rev 2 i had

Whats this I hear about VH4's being better after 2007 Im a noob and dont understand why that would be

 

[Ventura]

Hey guys I'm debating between getting the Diezel VH4 or the Herbert. Ive listened to every sound clip/recording I have found and read every review i could find on both amps.

Saying that i am a rock/hard rock player and play allot of clean wet delay/reverbie style stuff. I find the VH4 channels 2-4 are more my style and less aggressive than the Herbert. But I need a good clean channel, its a must. So my question to all you Diezel professionals.....is the clean channel on the VH4 really THAT bad? Will i have to run a Vox or Fender combo for cleans or can you get away with using it?

Any opinions would be amazing!

All the best ,

Jay

Channel 1 is not bad... FAR, far from it. I am not sure how this "consensus" was ever reached, but VH4's channel 1 is golden - percussive, tight, clear, and loud as hell. Sure, it's not a Vox or a Fender 6L6 style clean (not to say you can't jam some 6L6's into the chassis and rebias it for this purpose), but I find it terrific. There's a lot you can do with its gain levels, and the master presence and depth... I can get pianos coming out of Channel 1 no problemo.

So - not sure how this all came about. I think there are some cats who "prefer" Herb's channel 1, but preference is a personal thing - not an objective thing.

Peace,
V.

 

[JasonEldon]

Hey guys I'm debating between getting the Diezel VH4 or the Herbert. Ive listened to every sound clip/recording I have found and read every review i could find on both amps.

Saying that i am a rock/hard rock player and play allot of clean wet delay/reverbie style stuff. I find the VH4 channels 2-4 are more my style and less aggressive than the Herbert. But I need a good clean channel, its a must. So my question to all you Diezel professionals.....is the clean channel on the VH4 really THAT bad? Will i have to run a Vox or Fender combo for cleans or can you get away with using it?

Any opinions would be amazing!

All the best ,

Jay

Channel 1 is not bad... FAR, far from it. I am not sure how this "consensus" was ever reached, but VH4's channel 1 is golden - percussive, tight, clear, and loud as hell. Sure, it's not a Vox of a Fender 6L6 style clean (not to say you can't jam some 6L6's into the chassis and rebias it for this purpose), but I find it terrific. There's a lot you can do with its gain levels, and the master presence and depth... I can get pianos coming out of Channel 1 no problemo.

So - not sure how this all came about. I think there are some cats who "prefer" Herb's channel 1, but preference is a personal thing - not an objective thing.

Peace,
V.

Extremely well put.

I was thinking to myself it couldn't be bad! its so nice to have a place where you can get real opinions from real musician with first hand experience. I would love to be able to try out the VH4 prior to buying it but i don't know anyone who owns one so my decision is purely based on expert opinion's like yourselves.

thank you for taking your time to help me,


cheers,

Jay

 

[stefvorcide]

Maybe I can't dial my amp correctly on the clean channel... but I liked more the clean on the VH4 than on Herbie. might be my V30 speakers (not sure which speaker the cab I played the VH4 had)

 

[RJF]

I barely touched channel 1 the one time I had a few minutes to play with a VH4, but I remember the clean being a bit stale. It seemed to be plenty loud and is actually clean, with zero dirt coloring it. Throw some chorus and reverb through the effects loop to jazz up channel 1 some and you should be good to go.

 

[Nico]

For the best Diezel clean channel with the exception of possibly the Schimdt the Einstein is the one to go, then the Herbert, finaly the VH4.

You don't really buy a Diezel to have a clean channel though.


If you play hard rock I'd say go with the Herbert or Einstein as well (Einstein is for hard rock, and is greatly underated) The VH4 is a little too compresed, it has the great 3rd channel...

Thats the thing about Diezels, the perfect amp for me would be

Channel 1: Schmidt cleans
Channel 2: Einstein channel one with the 3 toggle switch (clean, texas, mega)
Channel 3: VH4
Channel 4: Herbert's 2nd channel

Now that would be the end it all Diezel

 

[Ventura]

I barely touched channel 1 the one time I had a few minutes to play with a VH4, but I remember the clean being a bit stale. It seemed to be plenty loud and is actually clean, with zero dirt coloring it. Throw some chorus and reverb through the effects loop to jazz up channel 1 some and you should be good to go.

I run an EHX Cathedral Stereo Reverb through the stereo loop ever-so-slightly, and sometimes just a touch of delay, and it's 100% terrific - sonically perfect. The naked Channel 1 on the VH4 is very, very neutral - it's not brown, it's not sparkly, it's not syrupy - it's pure clean. So you can take this to places you couldn't take otherwise 'toneful' cleans. By this I mean, if you start stripped down, you can add up - but if you start colored, you can't strip it down.

There are other amps out there which offer a more "distinctive" clean channel - but that's because of color and tone, not neutrality. The VH4 is pure and neutral, do with it what you may

V.

PS - and hey, then you've got an absolutely KILLER Channel 2 and the end-all-be-all of Diezel tone, the infamous Channel 3. For a question that will beg asking, Channel 4 is good too - it takes some taming down, I typically use it as an experimental channel - low to moderate gain, different EQ settings, etc. But if you want a seering hot, razor blade solo tone - Channel 4 will deliver in spades.

 

[JasonEldon]

Maybe I can't dial my amp correctly on the clean channel... but I liked more the clean on the VH4 than on Herbie. might be my V30 speakers (not sure which speaker the cab I played the VH4 had)

Rock on man i hear ya!

For some reason i just feel like ill have more options with the VH4 ya know having the 4th channel. Plus i don't play any metal so the Herbie would be a waste for me. Id rather see a Herbie go to the home of a metal head were shes gonna have blistering metal riff played outta her all day!

 

[JasonEldon]

I barely touched channel 1 the one time I had a few minutes to play with a VH4, but I remember the clean being a bit stale. It seemed to be plenty loud and is actually clean, with zero dirt coloring it. Throw some chorus and reverb through the effects loop to jazz up channel 1 some and you should be good to go.

I run an EHX Cathedral Stereo Reverb through the stereo loop ever-so-slightly, and sometimes just a touch of delay, and it's 100% terrific - sonically perfect. The naked Channel 1 on the VH4 is very, very neutral - it's not brown, it's not sparkly, it's not syrupy - it's pure clean. So you can take this to places you couldn't take otherwise 'toneful' cleans. By this I mean, if you start stripped down, you can add up - but if you start colored, you can't strip it down.

There are other amps out there which offer a more "distinctive" clean channel - but that's because of color and tone, not neutrality. The VH4 is pure and neutral, do with it what you may

V.

PS - and hey, then you've got an absolutely KILLER Channel 2 and the end-all-be-all of Diezel tone, the infamous Channel 3. For a question that will beg asking, Channel 4 is good too - it takes some taming down, I typically use it as an experimental channel - low to moderate gain, different EQ settings, etc. But if you want a seering hot, razor blade solo tone - Channel 4 will deliver in spades.

I agree with you on everything here man. Its like when your cooking you can always add more but ya cant take it back out! I prefer the idea of having a neutral clean tone and being able to colour it how i please. That's a very good way to describe it your really know your stuff.

 

[JasonEldon]

For the best Diezel clean channel with the exception of possibly the Schimdt the Einstein is the one to go, then the Herbert, finaly the VH4.

You don't really buy a Diezel to have a clean channel though.


If you play hard rock I'd say go with the Herbert or Einstein as well (Einstein is for hard rock, and is greatly underated) The VH4 is a little too compresed, it has the great 3rd channel...

Thats the thing about Diezels, the perfect amp for me would be

Channel 1: Schmidt cleans
Channel 2: Einstein channel one with the 3 toggle switch (clean, texas, mega)
Channel 3: VH4
Channel 4: Herbert's 2nd channel

Now that would be the end it all Diezel

DUDE that amp would ROCK!!!!

Hopefully Peter is listening Id buy it in a heartbeat!

 

[racerevlon]

Whats this I hear about VH4's being better after 2007 Im a noob and dont understand why that would be

I'd love to hear the answer to this question as I have a 2006...

 

[JasonEldon]

Whats this I hear about VH4's being better after 2007 Im a noob and dont understand why that would be

I'd love to hear the answer to this question as I have a 2006...

hopefully someone gives us an answer! how are you liking the clean channel on your 2006 VH4? If you could compair it to the clean channel of another head or amp what would it be?

 

[Ventura]

Whats this I hear about VH4's being better after 2007 Im a noob and dont understand why that would be

I'd love to hear the answer to this question as I have a 2006...

Um, it's again, not necessarily better, or worse, for that matter - it's just since the inception of the V back in the 90's it's gone through several different iterations. If you search this topic in this forum, you'll find all the details from a previous thread. Basically, the newer amps have a wee bit more gain on tap, but some argue with that has come more compression. It's all personal. I've owned a 2001, 2004, and a few in between, and now have a 2009 VH4S - and it slays.

Best,
V.

 

[JasonEldon]

ttt

 

[racerevlon]

hopefully someone gives us an answer! how are you liking the clean channel on your 2006 VH4? If you could compair it to the clean channel of another head or amp what would it be?

The clean channel on the VH4 is quite unique. It has a distinct low-mid tone that produces an almost eerie tone. something like the intro to "Pull Me Under" without all the FX. If I had to compare it to another clean I would say either a more darkly-EQ'ed Mark V Channel 1, or a Hughes & Kettner TriAmp MK II Amp 1A, more the latter than the former.

Hope this helps,

 

[slyvren]

For the best Diezel clean channel with the exception of possibly the Schimdt the Einstein is the one to go, then the Herbert, finaly the VH4.

You don't really buy a Diezel to have a clean channel though.


If you play hard rock I'd say go with the Herbert or Einstein as well (Einstein is for hard rock, and is greatly underated) The VH4 is a little too compresed, it has the great 3rd channel...

Thats the thing about Diezels, the perfect amp for me would be

Channel 1: Schmidt cleans
Channel 2: Einstein channel one with the 3 toggle switch (clean, texas, mega)
Channel 3: VH4
Channel 4: Herbert's 2nd channel

Now that would be the end it all Diezel

I'd buy 2 the day it was released.

 

[Joeytpg]

Ok, this thread was written for me to answer.

I play more clean than 90% of the guys on these forums, I'm in the clean channel 60% of the time, 30% of the time I'm in a gritty dirty blues overdriven tone and 10% of the time I'm doing higher gain.

I love big fat fendery cleans, I have a Princeton Reverb that's my GO TO amp when I want clean. I also have an Egnater Renegade which has a clean channel that's almost a Bassman clone, and a Duesentrieb Little Joe that has a Fender Deluxe Reverb kind of tone.

I had an Einstein and now I have a VH4, I had the together, so I had the chance to really try them both.

I prefer the VH4 cleans. The VH4 cleans are pretty neutral as Ventura stated. You need to add a touch of reverb or delay to REALLY make it go, but once that's there the cleans are beautiful. They're a bit dark, perfect for blues. I use 6L6 in mine so that helps.

Also remember that MOST of the guys that own VH4 use high output pickups that SUCK for cleans. I play strats 80% of the time, and those single coils sound AMAZING through my VH4.

The Herbert's cleans are sparkly and really bell like, and if that's your thing then go for it (don't think of the Herbert as a Metal beast only because it's not true, that amp ROCKS for Jazz to blues to country to metal)

That being said, I really want a Schmidt, it's the one with the special cleans, I'm even willing to trade the VH4 for one but where I live no one owns a Schmidt.

take a listen to a couple of VH4 cleans:

here's my VH4 with my strat (it's got EMGs, but SA single coils which were VERY good and didn't feel "sterile at all" I have real strat single coils on that guitar now but don't have a clip for you)

Here's one of my FAVORITE VH4 clips in youtube. To me this guy not only smokes, but the VH4 sounds SOOOO out of it's element that if you where not seeing it in the video, you'd have never guesses it was a VH4. The clean part is at the end when the funky rhythm starts

 

[Gutmann]

Joey - you have to play the schmidt! From what I hear, it would be the perfect match for you.

I played several Fenderamps before the Schmidt, two Twins, a DRRI and the Prosonic and I prefer the Schmidt's cleans over them.
The Reverb is also great sounding, slightly darker than the Fender reverb but way more useable (unless you want a surfsound).