Blues junior and Clapton mid boost strat

[Apprentice]

Hi guys, I wonder if anyone has experience of this. I have a Clapton Strat which is great by The Way. But if I increase the boost the sound gets really quite brassy to the point of mud. I don't seem to be able to get the sparkle back into the sound.
Tha BJ is a Hoffman (schematic below). I wondered if the noiseless pickups and active electronic are messing with the BJ front end. I've got a standard Strat and a plus with lace sensors, both sound excellent through this amp. I have installed vvr and cathode biased the output stage so that I can get the tone at all volumes.
Any ideas?

[sluckey]

Seems to be a guitar issue, not an amp issue.

[Apprentice]

Ok, I'll have to investigate a bit deeper. Thanks for the reply

[jjasilli]

+1 to sluckey.  Also, I think this is only to be expected, because mids cause mud.  It's handy to have a mid boost on the guitar; but then you'll have to set your amp (and any pedal) controls accordingly.  If you boost mids everywhere you'll get mud.

[Apprentice]

That makes sense, just means you have to be quite careful with the guitar and pedal pots. Not really used to that, so will experiment a bit more.
Thanks Sluckey always good to get another thought on things.

[pompeiisneaks]

Agree with all here, I'd wager he has some specific amp's that have a little less mid themselves and he likes that mid boost.  Seems odd because most guitars have mid scooped eq to get that problem resolved :)

~Phil

[Apprentice]

Apparently he's had the active circuits removed and just goes clean nowadays!
The Fender amp is totally made for him. Even so will do some more fiddling I think

[EL34]

EQ'ing the signal is a huge part of getting the sound right.

Try an outboard EQ pedal maybe?

Or try the guitar on some other completely different rig and see what it sounds like

Also, some amps just make mud because of the speakers

[Apprentice]

I was also thinking speaker, I also agree with we fiddling. I'm possibly going to try a Celestion vintage 30. I think my alternative amp could do with a speaker upgrade too, so a little hard to tell what's going on there.
Thanks for the input

[Ed_Chambley]

If you have the Vintage 30, go for it.  I finally bought a Warehouse Veteran and the claim it has less mid ramp, all things being equal.  It does.  Good pricing as well.

[Apprentice]

Thank you gents for your help. As per Sluckeys post not an amp issue other than the speaker probably.
I did some investigation and decided to drop the pickup height. It seems the output was swamping the Amp front end and causing a boost of its own. Put that together with active boost etc and I got mud. Solved issue for now.
I will replace the speaker (a bit more searching).  I'm really pleased with the results from my BJ build.
The tone just makes you want to play and play. Glad I found the site and the vast amount of effort which has been put into its content so thanks again.