Are built in "low power" modes on amps ever any good?

[Peaj]

Marshall Origin, DSL, Orange Rocker/Terror and lots of other new amps have built in switches for lower wattage. Often there's like a 5W, 3W, 1W, .5W, .1W, insanely low wattage.

There's the one question of at what wattage level is power amp distortion actually attainable at a very low volume, which seems to be lower than a lot of people expect, but there's the more interesting question of do these low wattage modes ever actually sound good? Lots of conventional wisdom I see seems to indicate the answer is no. Just curious:

1. Is there a difference between amps with "attenuation" built in vs amps that merely have some "on/off" function that cuts out some of the tubes? And is this a meaningless distinction? Forgive me if these are the same exact thing, I figured they weren't but I could be wrong.

2. In the cases where low power mode sounds like crap, and it seems like at the very low end when you get into the 1W and under territory lots of people say it does, is this a function of attenuation/power cutting diminishing the tone of the "full" amp? Or does uber low wattage just sound bad? The DSL 1W's .1 Watt mode gets panned online as shitty sounding, but the full power 1 watt mode also gets panned as not that great.

Sometimes I think attenuation and/or the lowest wattage possible is mostly a lost cause and always comes with a steep price tonally. I posit there could be a sweet spot of modest wattage amps in the 20-15 watt range, then knock it down 10-15 db to get a smattering of power tube distortion at modest volume. But extremes of drastic attenuation while maintaining tone could be mirages.

 

[PS412]

I have a T.C 100 that has an attenuator for each channel. 50, 20, 7, 3 I think. Never had it on 7 or 3 but I think it works excellent. Sounds close enough to be the same as full out.

 

[Cynical]

The 5 watt switch on the Marshall Studio amps works great. It's ever so slightly different than the 20 watt sound (a bit "softer" and more midrangey), but it still sounds fantastic.

 

[Mincer]

Depends on the style of amp, really. My Tone Master Deluxe Reverb has an attenuation switch, and all but the lowest setting is the *same exact tone* at lower volumes. At the lowest setting, you start to hear it thin out a bit.

 

[Clint 55]

1 watt on my 20, 5, 1 watt Peavey is all I ever use. It's the best ever. I'm not a metalhead tho. Sounds like you might be talking about epic metal toanz.

I didn't like the 1/2 watt amp or attenuator I had. I think there's probably some good and some bad for what your purpose is. Unless your sound requires you to push hella air.

 

[GuitarStv]

The lower power settings are pretty good on the Marshall Origin amps.

That said, you might need to temper your expectations a little bit. There's a visceral reaction that you get when your chest is slammed with waves of sound pressure that cannot be reproduced at low volumes.

Also probably good to keep in mind . . . power tube distortion is a tool. It's not always the best tool for the job. Sometimes pre-amp distortion or a pedal will sound better for a particular application. (And sometimes what you think is power tube distortion is actually the PI tube giving up the goods.)

 

[PFDarkside]

Other than the extreme cases, they work and sound great. Don’t think of it as volume reduction, think of it as headroom reduction. If you are looking at a way to get a tube amp really quiet and/or get power tube breakup at low volumes, modeling is the better option. Even my Princeton Reverb which is a pretty low power amp, needs to get into the sweet spot to sound great. It sounds good at lower volumes with a pedal pushing it, but up above 4 is where it starts to shine as a tube amp.

For solid state amps the power reduction has basically no impact. As long as you aren’t getting into the nasty side of power FETs clipping they sound good across all power ranges.

For a tube amp, there are several ways to bring down power.

The easiest is on a 4 tube, push/pull amp like a Marshall 100W. The switch pulls two of the tubes out of the circuit, taking it down to 50W. You’ve still got the bigger power supply and output transformer so it’s not the same as the 50W Marshall.

Next is a Pentode/Triode switch, they claim it’ll take a 2xEL34 50W amp to 25W, but again it’s a function of changing the way the tubes are operating bringing down headroom.

The next way is through lowering plate voltage on the tubes. That’s how a lot of the power scaling is occurring now. It’s bringing down the operating voltage and therefore reducing power and headroom. These sound pretty good, but a 2x6L6 is still going to be loud even with reduced power.

I’ll come back to the start, if you are looking for squishier, lower headroom tube tones they work well. if you are looking for “quiet tube amp tone”, you might not be happy.

 

[beaubrummels]

My Orange AD50 has a choice between push/pull Class A/B 50 watt and Class A 30 watt and the Class A 30 watt is insanely better; brighter, clearer, beautiful bloom and life to the sound. I have a Marshall SL-X that switches from 100w to 50w and 50w sounds dark and lifeless. So it really depends on the implementation.

 

[ehdwuld]

My Bugera G5 has a 5, 1, & 0.1
it sounds super thin at 0.1 watt
And it comes alive at 5 watt

They do sound different

 

[FuseG4]

I thought the orange rocker 15 was too loud in .1W mode to dime the amp at night that's for sure
but it did not sound like butt compared to full power, compressed yes, and missing that feedback interaction with speaker and guitar... Sounded very much like a quiet version of the amp but stiffer, compressed, darker, and you have to EQ differently for a loud sound vs a quiet one but I think once you do, at least with this amp it's useable. feels "tubey", and can be appreciated but does make me appreciate the full power of the amp and playing loud even more
i bet a lot of it comes down to individual amps and some will be voiced to sound good at that volume and have a more transparent power scaling scheme and some won't
And then there's your expectations, some people try a ton of stuff before realizing that apartment friendly bedroom volumes always gonna be missing something unless you get complicated and reamp with IRs to try to emulate more of the guitar/amp/speaker experience of loudness...

 

[jmh151]

The 10, 30,90 watt options on my Mesa Mark V work great, I prefer the 10 watt mode with the variac running

 

[Peaj]

Great answers, thanks everyone.

TBH my JCM2000 DSL 100 sounds good to my ears at low volume without attenuation. It repeatedly wins out as the best option through much experimentation. I'm conscientious of some of the minor imperfections of this tone, it gets a little "drill" ish sometimes, but it's present and punchy, pretty quality for my purpose, and I can get good recorded tones with it. I've tried the Rivera Rockcrusher and Boss TAE, and both of them made it sound "far away", kind of muffled, and squished the presence out of it, even with the TAE's presence knob maxed out. Both were returned, though I'm aware part of this has to do with the fact that putting the volume knob past 7 on a 100 watt amp and expecting the attenuator not to fuck with the tone is silly. Just needed to try though!

A lot of this is about trying to play the "self sufficiency" game and get sort of recordable and presentable tones as much as possible with my own ****, and the lower the volume, the more time during the day I have to record. With the TAE especially, I was taken in by the prospect of getting my DSL 100 watter down to bedroom levels that would record well at any time of day, but this just seems illusory. The low power modes on various amps temp me as a next experiment, but I'm actually thinking differently now. The "all hours" part might be the thing that gets the axe, because if I were to try the attenuation thing again and try to get a bit of that power tube distortion, my MO might just be to get a decent 15 watter, buy another Rivera for $300, play the thing at full power around 4-5 on the volume and shave just a bit of DB off without going to the "studio" mode. Still fairly loud, might need to cut it off at 10 PM, but doable during the day, and with enough power tube distortion to sound good, and not ridiculously attenuated as to sound ****ty.

 

[Demanic]

My Picovalve has a 2/5 watt switch. Both are quite usable. The 2 watt makes for a good bedroom setting, providing that the bedroom is well insulated and on the other side of the house from everyone else. The 5 watt setting will keep up with a disciplined rhythm section in a small room for recording purposes, as long as you don't need a pure clean tone.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

 

[FuseG4]

When I had a UK DSL50, the difference in tone between the low volume and stage volume tones were enough to make me say "this is a stage volume amp" and sold it pretty soon after and haven't owned anything more than 22w since

​​​​​​But I prefer full attenuation with cab sims and headphones to trying to record low volume tones

​​​​​​If the speaker isn't moving enough to do it's thing i may as well go with no physical speaker, I think it takes some playing with IRs and EQ and sometimes compression to get a good feel but i need some of that warmth and bouncy feel and high end roll off that comes with playing loud, or else it feels stiff and too present.

That said, this is all just being picky and there's a whole world of musical ideas you can get across with a preamp gainy sound and to be honest I think the JVM sounds really really good at low volumes if you gotta play that way sometimes, just has a "liquid" feeling down to absurdly low levels, wish I could know how they did it. Gain staging I guess.

 

[PS412]

My jvm 210 sounds pretty decent at lower volumes.

 

[ItsaBass]

Loved it on my Marshall JCM 900 100 W Dual Reverb, and my Marshal JCM 2000 TSL 122.

Love the 15 W mode on my Mesa Express 5:25 Plus...but I don't like the 5 W mode.

 

[Bogner]

In a word...YES!

 

[Erlend_G]

I have a Blackstar HT-20mkII combo, with a 2w/20w knob.

It sounds a bit more "ballsy" on the full 20 watt mode, but breaks up much earlier (and gives the nice tube harmonics) for home use, at 2 watts.

I have no idea how this function really works. But I usually leave it on two watts . It was a big selling point for me, when I bought it.

-Erlend

 

[GreatOz]

I have the HT5R-MkII and agree with Erlend_G. It sounds slightly "ballsier" on the full 5w setting, but the tubes compress and break up much earlier on the 0.5W setting. I use the 0.5W for both performance and practice. For performance, it keeps the stage volume down and I have in-ears, and for practice so I don't wake everyone up.

 

[Erlend_G]

^^ cool to hear. I was about to buy the HT-5, because I was so impressed by its clean tone (compared to the Boss Katana and other amps in the showroom)

But I ordered the HT-20, to be sure I had enough volume. (To be honest, It cannot hang with a band, unless it's a very quiet, acoustic one)

rock on!! \m/