I can see your point but I'm really not keen on losing the deluxe (I can't afford a new amp and keep the deluxe). I think the issue is more to do with the pickups though as other guitars I have played through the deluxe have sounded great. I do have a bad monkey that I use occasionally and whilst it does give more gain it still doesn't sound how I would like it to.
fair enough, if you're sure it's the guitar, then that's fair enough.
bear in mind that removing the treble bleed isn't necessarily a panacea. IME, while guitars with treble bleeds can sound thin with the volume down, guitars without them sound way too muddy/dark etc. :lol: If i could be arsed, I'd try a whole bunch of different options for all the ways you can wire a treble bleed (you can put a resistor in there too, various different values of caps and/or resistor, wiring the resistor in series/parallel, i think, etc. etc.) to see how close to perfect you can get. i think there's some info on it on the duncan site, but i could be wrong.
or even put one on a push-pull pot, so you can select whether it's in the circuit or not (that's what i'd do if i weren't lazy- i like the extra sparkle for when i'm rolling back to clean, but like the extra darkness for when i'm rolling back to a bit less overdriven, but still overdriven).