From:   Doug S   (doug64cutty@XXX.com) 
Date:  12/27/2002 4:05 AM 
Subject: Re: Gerald Weber fender "lead" normal channel mod ..it rips 
 

anyways here goes..
 
he calls the fender clean sound "midrange scooped" the mod takes some of the guitar signal and bypasses the tone stack, upping gain and midrange.
 
look at V1 from the inside of the chassis, clockwise from the blank "key" is pin #1.
 
Solder one end of the 1meg 1/2W resistor to pin 1, leaving the other end pointing at the volume pot. 
 
Now looking at the back of the volume pot, there are 3 leads. Solder one end of the .01mfd/400vdc cap to the far right lead. holding the cap and reading the values left to right, its the right hand lead that get soldered to the pot. 
 
Connect the cap and the resistor with the shortest jumper you can use ( I had to come back and move mine around)
 
This mod does add some noise, which concerned me at first but you don't notice it when playing with the band.


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"How to Get the Sound You Don't Have". It's in the February 2003 VG, with Randy Bachman (of Bachman Turner Overdrive)
on the cover...the issue must have just come out...
 
This is a mod to give you a Marshallesque sound on the BF/SF Fender normal channel.
 
It goes like this:
 
Pin 1 of V1 preamp tube (anode of V1A)-> 1/2 W 1 mega-ohm resistor -> 0.1 mfd/400V cap *** -> RIGHTHAND lug of normal
channel volume pot [looking from behind the pot, from inside the chassis]
 
He did not say so explicitly, but [presumably] you don't UNDO anything: you just add these two circuit elements. 
 
This means that you're shunting some of the output of the first triode of the 12AX7 from entering the tonestack (since the
signal has another path to follow to the volume pot, other than to the 250 pF treble cap, and thence through the tone stack,
to eventually appear on the volume pot's righthand lug through the wire from the center lug of the treble pot). Gerald did say
this explicitly in the article.
 
I have several questions: How did he arrive at the value of the capacitor ? He did say that he wanted to beef up the mids in
the signal, as well as to reduce gain lost in the tonestack...You can't use the Duncan Amps TONE STACK SIMULATOR
"outside the box" to figure out how different cap values would change the sound in THIS context...
 
What do people think of this ? Has anyone tried it yet, or any thing like it ? It's certainly a very inexpensive, and (best of all)
non-destructive, and easy-to-do (and easy-to-undo !!) thing...
 
(One could also put a 1M pot in place of the fixed 1M resistor for more variety, eh ??)

*** Hmmm... the post at AMPAGE says that it is a 0.01uF cap.