New electric

Just purchased my first entry level electric in a new Epiphone Special 11 and a Spyder IV 15 Line 6 amp. For the money its more than ok but I'm having all kinds of trouble getting a really clean sound no matter what settings I use. To my ear it sounds like a crunch or metal channel. Although when I turn those on they're extremely harsh as I'm sure some would look for
It may be that I'm just not used to electric and that's what electric is. I guess my question is, would this improve if I replaced the factory strings, pickups, etc., or is this sort of what I should expect for going cheap.

It's not the guitar. You need to keep fiddling with all the knobs on the amp. Or read the manual.

Hey man, Welcome to the forum.
I have a Spider III 15, not much different than yours. Make sure you are on the clean channel (mine has clean-crunch-metal-insane). Check the drive level, keep it low. Set the channel volume about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way up. Adjust master volume to your liking. That should give you a clean sound. Adjust the EQ and you should be ready to go. I hope this helps. Also turn all effects off until you get the clean sound you want then tweak the effects. Good luck.

Appreciate the feedback. Now that I know it's settings related I'll plug away with that. In fact over the couple of hours it's getting better. Just for the heck of it I went to the crunch channel which was horrible as a factory set (in my opinion anyhow) and customized that. I'm so impressed with the sound, I'm becoming less concerned with the clean setting.

On the guitar itself, any thoughts about how each pickup should be adjusted or is this strictly to what you like the sound of?