blues tone

I have a Peavy classic 30 amp, and an Epiphone Les Paul Classic. I don`t know what kind of effects pedal I need to get the real bluesey sound without cranking my amp too loud. The Guitar and amp are hot enough., but I need that sustain and more dirty. also a way to clip the sound, if you know what I mean, I`m new to this and don`t have an idea. Can anyone make suggestions?

Hm... well I like a nice smooth sound... I use an American Strat with Custom Shop '69 pickups in it most of the time... other times I use a custom American double Fat Strat with a JB/'59 set in it... For effects I usually use a bit of overdrive to push the sound... with a slight bit of delay... not too much though. I like to play in the Neck position most of the time to give me that extra smoothness to my tone... I also use some compression for that extra sustain..... As for the amp settings... I use a clean channel with a bit of gain and a tad of distortion just to color the sound a bit... but not much at all!! I use GHS Zakk Wylde Boomer Strings on both guitars as well.... That's my blues tone. Pretty basic....

If you're talking about "clipping the sound".... I think you're talking about getting rid of the excess noise... I use a noise gate which pretty much cancels out all the frequencies that aren't part of the actual tone. It works really well.

Classic Blues tone happens when you ride the threshold between clean and distorted sound. This means pushing your amp hard enough that it just starts to distort. Then, hard pick attack can push it over the edge, while picking gently results in a clean tone. This allows for very expressive playing.

You can't truly get this tone from a pedal, because the tone comes from distortion in the power section of the amp. Which means playing loud. Pedal distortion, or distortion generated in the preamp, tends to be a lot less responsive to picking dynamics. You can try something like a Boss OD-3, which is designed to overdrive the preamp tubes.

You can also try cranking the gain up on the amp and turning the volume knob on the guitar down until you get the tone you want...That's how I get a good bluesy sound out of my Gibson SG and Marshall JCM 800.

Even with that set-up ( LP and Classic 30 ) you should be able to dial in a fairly nice tone. Try using a "light" overdrive or boost pedal such as a BOSS Superoverdrive, MXR/BOSS EQ, or MXR Micro Amp.

O.K. Thanks guys. I appreciate you input.