There seem to be some confusion regarding the Bluesmaster, people tend to believe that the PI (Phase inverter) and/or poweramp is the reason for ealy break up in Bluesmasters. It all comes down to excessive bass in the Bluesmaster preamp. Period :-) If you want a balanced tone from the Bluesmaster preamp, you have to keep the Bass (and mid) control really, really low.

If you are in doubt about this, make a search for a picture of Matt Schofield or Larry Carlton's Bludo BLUESMASTER settings, and you will see that both players have the tone control settings close to:

- treble at '5' (12 o'clock)
- mid at 3 (9 o'clock) and
- BASS at 2½ (8:30 o'clock).

You might argue that a stellar player like Scott Lerner, who use mostly Bluesmaster amps (Glaswerks and Bludo's) has his tone controls at noon?? Yes, but Scott Lerner almost always plays lead guitar on his clips - with OD and PAB on. AND Scott use MAGA BOOST, which in effect means that in his clips the tone controls are not active at all.

Hope this helps

PS: I have recently finished a Bluesmaster 100w with EL34s, and it took me a LOT of tweaking time to get the amp trimmers diales in. Compared to skyliner amps (I have 3 skyliner based amps) the Bluesmaster i should really be labelled; BASSMASTER :-)

PPS: @ 'Boldaslove', this is not relevant for you my man, since your preamp is a skyliner and NOT Bluesmaster)

Claus I'm happy for you finding your sound. I agree the on bass content of the Bluesmaster
One thing I disagree. The BM Phase Inverter has less headroom compared to the Standard Phase inverter.
You can calculate this; 9k(BM) vs. 25k(standard) cathode resistor for the PI.  9k has less headroom but also more harmonics due to valve characteristics(non-linear distortion).
Bass content can also be managed with the slope resistor; 47k is standard in a BM. But many, including me, go for a 68k or even a 100k slope resistor.

I've noticed an odd thing along these lines. It's been noted many times that the deep switch on these amps are wired backwards - switch has to be down to engage the deep boost. So when I built mine, I took care to invert the wiring so the switch would work the "right" way.

What has confused me a bit is that at first, it seemed as if my deep boost was still backwards - apparently it works in conjunction with the bass knob. I've found that if the bass knob is above about 3 or 4, the deep boost when flipped up (on my amp) seems to cut the bass slightly, or have almost no effect. At the moment I have the bass knob on 2, and the deep switch works as expected.

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this? It's not a big deal for me - I don't really feel a need for a deep boost anyway, so have been leaving mine off most of the time anyway.

Bringing this topic back to the top.

With my Les Paul, I can't run the Bass so low without the whole rig sounding too twangy and too trebly, even if I cut the treble and boost the mids (or vice versa).  I went back to Bass at 12 o'clock , mid at 1:30, and treble at 9:30.  Just works better for me, I suppose.  BTW, I'm running the 100w in full power mod with a Kleinulator. 

I've got JJ 6L6's in my 50w bluesmaster. Still tons of bass.

I can't even conceive of using Rane's setting with a les paul - it would be pure mud with my amp. Rane - do you have any mods to your bluesmaster? Could you try it without the kleinulator and see if that make a difference? Or maybe you have really bright speakers? Edit: Oh, I see you have some EVM12's - they're fairly bright from what I've heard - maybe that's what makes it work for you.

ok, so i have been learning alot about tube amps in the past few years, and i am pretty confident that i at least know enough to do a lil modding. i just want to make sure that i am looking at the correct resistor to swap out. is the resistor i have the arrow pointing to the correct one? Also, woukd this be the proper one to replace it? http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/IRC/RC55LF-D-7K68-B-B/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMv9ULLAfKm5f5gs0ndWVy2j

Yes, that resistor needs to be replaced...
...I used regular CF (Carbon Film) 1W resistor... here in EU RN65D resistors are imposible to find and ordering one from US just don't make any sense.
I don't notice any significant lose in tone cause of that, so I would not worry about resistor type that much.

The OTS series and HRM/MkII do have a different tonestack(skyliner). Off course you can try different slope resistors, but the higher you go with your slope resistor the less responsive your tonestack will be and maybe not so pleasant with a bluesmaster tonestack.
Anyway: try and see for yourself; it isn't hard to do and is always nice to see the outcome of the experiment.