I've found these last few posts especially helpful ,thanks guys.

I have been experiencing a lack of brightness right from the start and it was made worse by the JZ mods. Reading this made it clear that the MV cap had something to do with it so I went and got some caps (33,47 and 68pf).

Now I haven't got any croc clips so I tack soldered two wires to the MV contacts and ran these in to a chocolate block and then fixed each of the caps in turn after having run it with no cap. 33 made a big difference, 47 was better and I can understand why went with that scotto but I tried the 68pf aswell and with the Bright (on) Pres (10)and Treble (8)in their original positions it was too bright but dialing them back took the edge away so I fixed that in permanently.

Its a lot better now but still a little dull with humbuckers but I reckon I'm going to have to live with that since its not as simple as changing a setting when changing guitars, I have coil tapped my Fralin PAF's and use the tap switch quite a lot.

Thanks again chaps.

mckincu, I'm happy with the brightness now with the 68pf across the MV, but I'd be interested in what you think of the change to the bypass cap on V2. I'm going to experiment with a 5751 in v2 to try and cut back on the gain a little on OD, maybe even an ecc81 or 82 ( I will have to go and read up on their relative gain factors, can't remember what they are).

I would like to tweak further to get more high mids to give a little more sparkle without the piercing highs but I wouldn't know where to start with achieving that.

I don't have any EI tubes but I'll see if I can get a couple to try. I changed the Level pot when I did the JZ mods, and changed the bright cap back to 120pf. Might change that back up to 150-180 tho'.

My man, try to download the tsc software from this link: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/download.html

Its a tone circuit simulator, which enables you to try different values in at Fender (dumble), Marshall, Vox etc tone circuit. Try it and you will get a different impression of the slope reistors impact on the circuit.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this

Surprised anyone would think the mods are dark. I typically keep my presence and treble at 10 O'Clock. Plenty of room to brighten things up. The 47pf mod only works in conjunction with a tube dumbleator and 8' cables. The idea is that the parasitic capacitance introduced in the cables reduces the brash high freq content and then the 47pf is passing through frequencies, some of which have been removed by the effect loop cables. If you use no loop and no dumbleator you are not even close to the robben and carlton mods. Not to say that it won't sound good but just keep those parameters in mind when you are modding. Frankly, adding brightness at the MV side is the wrong way to go IMO since turning the master up negates the effect of the bright cap.

I'm beginning to think there are different OTS amps out there!. Marins clips, especially the clean strat ones seem nice and chimey to me and I think he said he recorded at quite low volume levels. Without the MV cap I was having to run the presence at full and treble at 7-8 and still it lacked sparkle. It was better when cranked up, and I mean loud, MV 4 or above.  Frankly I would like to dispense with the mv cap and have the tone stack do the right thing but I really don't know enough to start meddling, and anyway why is mine so different? I know I built it myself, but there really isn't that much that I could have done incorrectly and I have treble checked the wiring and my amp tech did the same prior to power up.

Ok, but surely you're a strat player -