DC-5 Lead Channel Tone Stack

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PatrickL101

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Merry Christmas, all.

I've just bought a DC-5b combo. I owned one previously, loved it, sold it and went through a JCM800 and a Lone Star before returning to the addictive crunch!
For recording purposes, I rely on the rhythm channel pull boost almost exclusively for a solid crunch rhythm tone and tend to prefer this boosted for leads over the lead channel itself. When setting the amp up this way, I lose the functionality of the non-boosted rhythm channel. This isn't much a problem for recording but I'd like to be able to switch between sounds that are a little closer in timbre.

I've bought some new tubes to control the headroom and open the whole thing up a little and as per my DC, I'll be performing the output volume, blanket and FX loop mods which for me, contributed to and improved on that lead channel opening up a little.

Looking at the block diagram on the first page of the schematic, the tone stack on the rhythm channel is pre-gain, after V1a but post-gain after V3b for the lead. Has anyone modded the lead channel to move the tone stack pre V2 and V3 gain stages that would be willing to share a diagram/ instruction on how to achieve this? It should bring the lead channel a little more in line with the rhythm and closer in operation to the Mark series to my mind.

I'm competent with a soldering iron, offering guitar repairs in my local area and would like to attempt this myself. My amp experience doesn't extend beyond simple mods or changing a resistor/ cap here or there, but there's not really anyone in the area I want to drop this amp to after a few horror stories from the locals.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Something I've been considering myself. Moving the tonestack would tighten the gain channel right up. Get it more Mark sounding than recto.

Being of partial knowledge and cutting traces on the actual board, I decided against it. Between keeping the gain low and boosting it. And not being as excessive on the graphic as I would be using a Mark. I get ballpark. I certainly don't hear the £2500 difference between my DC5 and Mk5 that way. The biggest problem I encountered was trying to get the bass response as fast as a Marks. Something I suspect is particular to plate driven tonestacks.
I recently built a high gain plate driven 15w. I definitely think that plate driven tonestacks work better earlier. They don't have the range of thier cathode driven counterparts.
Duncans Tonestack Calculator is great for showing that. Put in 38k input resistance on a Marshall type tonestack circuit. Snapshot the curve. Then change that input resistance to 1.3k to mimic a cathode driven stack.
 
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