Originally Posted by: JFRICKMy trick is simple....I just turn the volume knob down on my guitar a bit to around the 7 or 8 position. That takes the brightness out for me without actually turning the volume down....

A lot of how that works out depends on the dynamic responsiveness of your amp, and the value of your pots. Some guitars will get pretty thin and brittle sounding if it's volume knob is turned down too much. Pots with high values in the 500k to 1M will stay bright and clear, whereas pots in the 250k range will tend to get a little darker. My gutiars have 500k pots (I believe) and they remain clean and crisp with the volume rolled down, and depending on how the amp is set, can have some really nice "in between" tones. But, if I try to clean it up too much, the tone gets a little thin. I remedy this with a 250k volume pedal first thing in my effects chain. This lets me clean things up a bit, but retain some meat.

I'm not sure about the XXX combos, but with my XXX head, I used to keep my clean channel set something like Bass: 11-1 o'clock, Mid: 9-12 o'clock, and Treble: 1-3 o'clock, and the channel volume around 2 o'clock, and set the gain channels to that. Cranking the clean channels volume can help you get a little more meat out of it.