Brightening F-30

Hi, I use my F-30 with a Telecaster on Soul and Funk primarily, but need to get a good lead tone as well. The problem is that the gain channel w/or w/out contour gives me a really fat, dark and muddy sound. I'd like to get it more Clapton/Country style- bright and spanky but with some sustain. I was hoping to avoid a slew of pedals and processors and to go more plug and play old school, but I seriously need to clean this sound up. Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated!

I'm no expert on this, but here's my 2p's worth.....

Have you tried playing around with the tone controls? Perhaps put the bass control lower than you might expect (i.e. 10 to 11 o'clock)? These amps definitely need a lot of tweaking to get the sound you want! I find the amount of gain you have set also effects the "colour" of the sound so it's best to take care with the controls!

It all changes when you increase the master volume from "bedroom" to "band practice" levels..... ;-)

like he said....turn the bass down...way down to almost nothing. Turn your treble and mid to about the three o clock postion and see if thats any better.
The Bass control on the gain channel, like many here have stated before, is an anti flubb control.

Hey SD,

I struggled with those channels on my amp for years and have recently gotten them tamed. If you're good with a soldering iron in a tight space and know how to drain your filter caps (only if - they can kill you if you don't) there is a 1M resistor on the board that runs in parallel with the gain that you can swap out for a 10k (22k if you still want to get some real high gain at the end of the dial) and it will, if you're looking for a more classic tone, give you a much more usable gain sweep. There's still plenty of gain on the end of the dial but I found that that gain channel opened up a ton tone-wise and is far more musical in a classic rock sense. I am now able to set the gain for a nice lead tone and back off the guitar's volume a bit for a crunchy rhythm. It does brighten up the contour a bunch and is a matter of taste in regard to that but I never really dug that scooped thing on that channel anyway... I don't have a place to post the photo of the mod but if you want a pick pm me and I send one your way...