Modding a Fender style tone stack to uhm... something better

[jungleheat]

Ok, so I have 2 amps that have that Fender style tone stack. A mid/late 70s Bassman 10 combo, and a Music Man 65 112 of a similar "vintage".

Both are cool amps overall, but honestly, the tone controls are practically worthless to me and it's almost impossible to get the sounds I actually want out of the amp (especially when used with distorted guitars and any kind of bass). The B10 sounds killer with my Rhodes, and pretty good with clean guitars.

On the other hand, I have a Roland Jazz Chorus which I LOVE. The tone controls on this thing are very musical and very useable in contrast to the Fender style where the knobs are all in the wrong places frequency wise.

So what I was thinking, is it would be really awesome to mod those 2 amps tone controls to be more like the Roland if possible. Has anyone ever done anything like that? Would I have to sacrifice other features of these amps to do this?

On the 65 especially, I was thinking it would be really awesome to have that great Jazz Chorus sound, but with an EL34 power section and a great (albeit SS) swampy distortion sound.

On the B10, I was also thinking of replacing the speakers with something more modern (it's a sealed) 4x10, and having that combined with a wider bandwidth tone stack seems like it would result in a really flexible amp that could work with basically anything. As it is, I've used the Roland for guitar, keys, and bass, and it sounds incredible with all of them. So I'd be looking to get a similar function of the Fender.

So any advice, suggestions, rants, vitriol, etc...?

[BassmanPaul]

The MM is, IIRC, a SS front end driving a tube output stage. Pulling out the tone stack and substituting one from your Roland should be fairly easy.

I can't remember the B10 schematic off the top of my head so I'll leave that for now until I find said schematic.

[jungleheat]

Does it make a difference if the front end is tube or SS, in terms of changing out the tone controls?

And yes, as far as I know the MM has a SS pre.

Also, the Roland will be untouched, what I want to do is basically recreate the tone stack with "new" components.

This project is still probably a ways out in terms of when it will actually happen, but I had the idea the other night and wanted to float the idea to see if anyone has ever tried anything like it.

Alternately, has anyone ever tried other mods to the Fender tone stack to make it a bit more neutral (or any other kind of way)?