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.