For the record i wanted to admit a mistake i made and an observation about a mod i did to my marshall style build. I think i posted about this anyways, but i can't remember the posts in which i talked about it. Anyways, i deleted the cathode follower and took the tone stack feed from the plate of the stage that was B4 the CF. I thought this sounded better, but i knew it meant i would now have to tweak the entire preamp to best suit this new change. at some point i nailed it and was thrilled with the tone. No matter what i did, if i changed a single thing between the input and the last stage B4 the TS, the magical tone i was getting would go away. Some how i seemed to have achieved the perfect balance. I haven't touched it since.
however, the one thing that had become apparent is that in a mix it did not come thru well enough. i don't want to use the word cut, but i guess thats the best word i can think of. It's more like the old blanket over the speaker thing.....just wasn't clear and up front in a mix. After trying many ways to add bightness in an attempt to remedy that it hit me that since this killer tone goes away when i change a single thing in the preamp up to the point B4 the TS that the deletion of the CF was probably NOT why i had this great tone and that it may be responsible for the lack of cut.
So as you have probably guessed, i added the CF stage back in and that did the trick ! so after touting how great the amp sounds with a plate fed TS, and after even asking why it is so many amps use a CF when mine benefited so much by removing it, i must now look you all straight in the eyes and say "DOH!!!!".

It was NOT the deletion of the CF, it was the tweaks i did to the gain stages which did it, but in a way removing the CF was responsible for me finding that circuit balance because had i not done this i wouldn't have used some of the tweaks that worked so well because each on thier own i never liked B4. But with the plate fed stack they seemed to work better and that led me to a great gain stage setup. It's just amazing how many times i have discovered tweaks i thought were great only to later realize i'm full of......