Your Pale Ales are much different than what I see here. We have very simple grain bills, low hoping rates but a huge amount of hop aroma and flavor hops. Oh and you can not see through them.
indeed. the general idea is to have simple grain bills so that the specialty grain flavors don't cover up the hops flavors and aromas.
that said I wouldn't mind going back to something like denny's RIPA which has way more crystal than I would typically use these days on an IPA.