Whether you want distortion or not, the protocols for amplifying voices and acoustic instruments - vs electric guitars - parted ways long ago.
With or without distortion, the circuitry and limited-response speakers of guitar amps are part of the sound of an electric guitar.
Sound engineers in the pioneer era of amplication (say 1920 - 1940) were trying to retain natural sound, and simply make it louder. They gradually figured out that voices and acoustic instruments required both high-frequency horns and cone speakers for full-range "high-fidelity" reproduction.
Electric guitars evolved over the same period as a wholly different species – for practical purposes the only instrument which required personal amplification to be heard at ALL: if you had a guitar, you HAD to have an amplifier. The small tube amp, with all the idiosyncrasies and compromises necessary to make it portable and affordable, was half the instrument. (No early electric guitarist showed up at a gig expecting to be "lined in to the board" of a "public address" system – and with limited inputs at his disposal, no sound engineer could have accommodated him if he had.)
Thus the characteristic sound of electric guitars, with which players and listeners became familiar, grew to incorporate those limitations and compromises: less than full-range reproduction, decidedly non-linear frequency response with limits at both high and low end, and occasional-to-frequent (depending on the player and venue) power amp distortion. What started as necessity became the nature of the beast, and we learned to love the beast for itself.
Plug a microphone into such an amp, and you get poor vocal reproduction (especially by today's standards).
Both lineages of amplification (guitar and PA) have continued to evolve according to their own nature, and 60-70 years down the line, the differences between electric guitar (or bass) amplification – and the amplification of virtually everything else – have become deep and profound.
It makes sense that small, portable keyboard and acoustic amps are available which include perfectly serviceable vocal channels. They're essentially mini-PA systems in an integrated box.
It's equally logical that electric guitar amps don't have vocal channels; they're not designed for full-range reproduction.
I suppose a hybrid could be developed (maybe they already exist, and I'm not aware of them) with a separate channel eq'd and pre-amped for electric guitar. That channel would have to be kept out of the horn or piezo, which would seem to me to imply a separate amp feeding a separate speaker. So such an amp would essentially be two systems in one.
I suspect amps had multiple inputs "back in your day" because they were expensive items bought out of discretionary income (of which everyone then had less than most of us have now), and it was an attempt to provide more function for the investment.
I certainly remember sharing amps, and - even with multiple channels - it was always a compromise solution. It meant more of the band's noise was coming out a single point source (never as much fun for the player as hearing a panoramic soundfield), and that when the amp started to work hard, the two players' individual dynamics were compromised.
An amp for each player, as soon as it was affordable, must have been the goal of every player back in those halcyon days.
A buddy and I had a blast one February day in his garage, both of us cranked up through a Standel Super Artist (which we fried that afternoon). If what you aspire to is garage band sound quality, find an old Bandmaster, Twin, Showman, or whatever, and go for it!
I don't care to change your mind about anything, lionel, or teach an old dog new tricks, or suggest that your personal aesthetic isn't perfectly adequate. You don't like distortion, and that's fine.
But instead of hearing it as distortion – as an undesirable degradation of something – you might hear it as a palette of tones in its own right. Think of clean guitar as one instrument, and a range of variously overdriven and distorted guitars as DIFFERENT instruments, for different purposes.
A flute produces a pure clean tone, and is useful for certain roles in an arrangement; a violin or trumpet or sax produces more complex tones, combinations of intermodulated waveforms, and each contributes its own orchestral voice.
A distorted guitar (of which there are infinite variations) can take violin-like roles, and brass-like roles. It responds differently to touch and to tone control, articulates differently, and sustains differently. You don't even play it quite the same way you play a completely clean guitar, because it has – for sonic purposes – become a different instrument.
A keyboard player can move from piano to organ to synth and get vastly different sounds and articulation envelopes; learning one interface (the keyboard), he can produce a symphonic range of results.
That's what varieties of distortion bring to the guitarist who learns to manipulate them. You tune the instrument the same, the same intervals and basic techniques apply – but with another (related) set of techniques, a distorted guitar takes on different roles than clean, providing contrast, depth, and texture.
It's not musically worse than a clean guitar – it's just a different thing. And, in practical application, it has lent itself to the development of approaches to and genres of music which, for reasons from musical to cultural, you may not like (nor am I suggesting you should).
But knowing your appreciation for lush, sophisticated orchestrations, and music with dimension and sonic depth, I'm sure I could recommend a number of players (and specific albums) where distorted electric guitars are used for music you might enjoy, and in ways that might tickle your ear right fancy.
These guys are far from Link Wray, or any application where a slightly overdriven amp is used for essentially the same kind of music that had previously been played as clean as possible. I'm talking about very expressive, sophisticated music which would not be possible without intentional distortion.
ANYway...aside from the theoretical aesthetic foundations of distorchestration, if you're spending "a grand (or two or three)" on amps and getting a LAME clean channel, you're not buying the right amps. You can get great, deliciously clean amps for well under a grand! And if they happen to have a dirt channel or two, you can ignore them.
The problem in coming up with suggestions that please you completely may be that you started the thread requesting somehing "inexpensive, light, compact and not ostentatious" to bring an electric up to room volume. The notion of amplifying voice at the same time probably snuck in with my suggestion of the DA-5.
The DA-5, and several other amps which have been mentioned, are modelers. Only modelers have "fourteen distortion channels." (They're not really channels, though; they're settings.)
Two things about modelers work at disastrous cross-purposes to confound you personally: they're gloriously affordable (which you like), and they're much better at providing spectrums of distortion guitar tones than at clean tones (which you hate).
If the emphasis had not been on very low cost, I would have suggested something like the Tech 21 Trademark 60 (solid state, not a modeler, great huge clean tone, still very light) or a smallish Fender or Peavey tube amp.
But none of those would be good voice amps.
It COULD be, though, that you would LIKE the sound of an electric guitar through a high-fidelity acoustic or keyboard amp, or direct into the board of a small PA. The sound would be über clean, every nuance of your pickups would come through (including high-end you'd never heard before), and there would be sophisticated EQ to fine-tune it.
What would be left out is the tonal shaping electric guitar preamps provide, a kind of rounding and softening effect. And, of course, you couldn't push smoothly into a slightly overdriven tubey sound. But you HATE that anyway.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think you ought to try one of the acoustic/vocal amps we've mentioned. What you want out of electric guitar is somewhat different than what others want, and a channel in such an amp, with a bit of tweaking, might give it to you.
And, if you wanted to warm that guitar sound up just a BIT, a pre-amp like Tech21's SansAmp would give you that flexibility.
(I'm not suggesting you SHOULDN'T want sparkling clean, full-range, hi-fi, direct-into-the-board electric guitar tone. Nothing wrong with that at all.)
In double FACT, now that Tech21 has come up twice in my afternoon treatise, maybe you ought to mosey over to their website and check out their amps, Power Engines, and SansAmps.
Have you tried any of the amps suggested yet? Any comments on them, or progress toward a decision?
Your homework: try a DA-5, a small keyboard/acoustic amp, and a Tech21 amp.
