This amp has a huge clean sound with gobs of headroom, but breaks up into singing distortion as you increase the gain. But even with the volume controls cranked, the Bassbreaker 45 retains tons of dynamics and attack from your guitar. Leverage both the normal and bright channels at once with the handy "BOTH" jack to get deep, stacked tones that used to require jumpering inputs. The output control actually works to reduce wattage of the power stage rather than just acting as a straight level attenuator, so rather than getting significantly quieter at the bottom of the dial, the Bassbreaker 45 simply gets saggier, thicker, and more compressed.