so, i have had my bluesmaster for a little over a month now and have about 40 hours on it, and yes i agree it is kind of a dark amp and a little raw and harsh compared to a standard OTS, at least on the OD side. This isn't a flaw, it's is just the way the amp is designed to sound. I think some of it, in my case is caused by my current tube compliment and speaker cab, so i am not passing judgement until my combo cab gets here and i get some better tubes. I am definitely going to do some tube swapping, swap out the 47k slope resistor and bass pot, add pickmaster's treble bleed mod on both the OD and clean channel, get a c-lator and gsharp for fun
, but i was wondering if any of my fellow bluesmaster owners have considered one of these:
http://www.analogman.com/beano.htmfrom Mike's description:
"This is the Analog Man Beano Boost, a simple looking yet effective pedal.
This pedal is based on the 1960s British Dallas Rangemaster, which was needed at the time to give a treble boost to the dark British amps. This allowed them to get a sound more in tune with the time, as guitars were starting to become a loud, bold, lead instrument. This pedal is a type of BOOSTER, not really a distortion pedal nor a clean boost- it does modify your sound quite a bit. It excites certain frequencies and pushes your amp to allow it to create rich tube distortion. The pedal colors your tone, with a crunchy overdrive, boosting certain frequencies, and warming the tone with NOS germanium transistors. It does not have a lot of compression and sustain like most OD pedals, but a more raw, open sound.
This pedal has three tone settings from the tone switch- Center is a treble boost, the same as the original Dallas Rangemaster. UP is a fuller-frequency mid range boost (MID setting). Down is a LOW range, also quite a full frequency sound. Optionally we can install a push/pull switch (built into the volume knob) for 2 tone selections (treble and mids) but this option is not as good so we rarely build them.
The Beano Boost is spectacular into an amp that is already cranked up pretty well. It will also work well into a clean amp, but you probably need to turn the volume on the pedal up, to make the tone thicker by hitting the amp harder and making it work more.
At 9:00 the Beano Boost is unity gain and may not sound very special into a clean amp. At 12:00 it starts to boost the volume and get thicker. At 3:00 it should be waking your tubes up like a passing jet plane".
i'm thinking of using it's frequency boosting ability more than its "volume boosting" ability, to kind of brighten the ol bluesmaster up. what do y'all think?
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