Attenuators - any good for home playing?

M

Marinblues

New member
I've heard different opinions about attenuators - some say they are great, some say that they do not do much more than a volume knob.

What's your experience?

The ones I am looking at are:

- Koch Loadbox II
- THD
- Weber Mass


thanks


Marin
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I've owned an Altair Attenuator since late '70s I think. I can't recall when I got it. It's kind of nice because you can get the sound of a cranked amp when your amp doesn't have a master volume control. And you don't need a lot of gain or a booster to make it work.

I don't use it anymore though. It flattens dynamics too much, and the attenuator setting was always too loud, or not loud enough for use at home.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I own a Weber Mass and never use it. If I have to keep the volume down I either play my acoustic guitar or plug into my Fender Princeton or Gibson GA-20.

The Weber Mass is the only attenuator I have experience with and it's very good for bringing a cranked 50 or 100 watt amp down to moderate stage volumes.

Using it to bring a loud amp down to bedroom levels is OK for practice...but it's not a very inspiring tone. Kind of thin and fizzy...but it's OK.

Lew
 
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Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I had a Weber Mass and sold it...I never used it! FWIW it was the best attenuator I ever tried and I tried several! The issue is this...you;re not gonna turn a 100 watter Marshall into a pratice amp and to be fair you won't even turn a 15 or 20 watter into a bedroom amp...at least not without messing the tone up.

Best bet is to look into something w/ power scaling or look into an amp thats only say 3 or so watts...
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

What is power scaling? I've seen the term a lot lately and see some amps on Ebay modified to include Power Scaling. What's the scoop? How does it work? Lew
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I have a Weber MiniMASS permanently mounted in te back of my 18 Watter - it's the only real volume control the amp has, since the pot marked "volume" really just controls the amount of dirt.

The MiniMASS works pretty well. It squashes dynamics a bit, but it's not too bad. I think it does a good job of turning an 18 Watter into a bedroom amp. It would probably NOT do a good job turning a Marshall Plexi into a bedroom amp - that's just too much to ask.

I say, use an amp that's close to the right power for the job, then use an attenuator to fine-tune the volume.
 
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Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

those Mesa 5:25 and 5:50 look interesting. I guess they go from 5 to 50 watts? They seem interesting if they sound good at both volumes. One amp I am very interested in./
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I saw an ad for an Orange Thunderverb?, I think, it had an attenuator built into the amp. Not sure I'd like it, but if was completely by-passable OK.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I've tried a bunch of attenuators and I thought all of them were worthless. Power Scaling is the ticket.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I had a THD Hot Plate for about 18 months. I used it with a '77 50w JMP master volume head. That was a very loud amp and the Hot Plate let me get the power tubes sounding sweet whilst keeping the volume appropriate for small gigs and rehearsals. I never used it for home playing, as I always found I got a better low-volume tone with a pedal or a solid state amp. I've replaced the '77 head with an '80 JMP master volume combo and that sounds fine at low volume just turning the gain up. So I've sold the Hot Plate.

I think attenuators are great for bringing a 100w or 50w amp down to rehearsal / small gig volume, but at low volume you can get a better tone using other methods - pedal, master volume tube amp, SS amp or low wattage tube amp.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

martin6stringcustoms said:
I've tried a bunch of attenuators and I thought all of them were worthless. Power Scaling is the ticket.
Click to expand...

I apologize, but I don't understand what power scaling is or how it works. Would you mind helping me a little? I would appreciate it. thanks, dave:oo:oo:oo
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Depends on what you consider "home volume". I have a HotPlate and a Mini MASS and each will take things down a fair bit but I'm talking more "wife won't divorce me" rather than "baby won't wake up" volume.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Quick answer about power scaling. If you reduce your B+ voltage you get less output volume. Power scaling is new in it's use in the amp world, but the actual practice and architecture of how the B+ voltage is reduced is not new. This is much the same way that Fender took their amp designs from a handbook. The guy from London Amps took a method to reduce the voltage and used it to reduce volume.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

There's a good article this month in Vintage Guitar about using a Variac to take the volume of the amp down by pulling some of the voltage out.

The synopsis is that it can be done, but there is a point where it just starts sounding like garbage.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Skarekrough said:
There's a good article this month in Vintage Guitar about using a Variac to take the volume of the amp down by pulling some of the voltage out.

The synopsis is that it can be done, but there is a point where it just starts sounding like garbage.
Click to expand...
As I understand it, power scaling is like using a variac but it maintains the bias where a dropping the voltage using a variac requires you to adjust the bias to account for the voltage drop.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

I used a THD Hot Plate with my Roadster for a bit and it did a better job at bringing the amps volume down to small gig levels. The amp was still too loud for home play. On the Hot Plate it attenuates by amount of decibels, and you can only attenuate by 8 db before it starts making the amp sound flat and dead. The bright and deep switches help some, but only up to the 8 db setting. That being said, 8 db may be all the attenuation you need to bring it down to the level you want.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Gr8Scott said:
Quick answer about power scaling. If you reduce your B+ voltage you get less output volume. Power scaling is new in it's use in the amp world, but the actual practice and architecture of how the B+ voltage is reduced is not new. This is much the same way that Fender took their amp designs from a handbook. The guy from London Amps took a method to reduce the voltage and used it to reduce volume.
Click to expand...


My Music Man does something like that, but it's on the standby switch...in the up pos., it gives the plates 700V, and if you put the switch down, it only gives them 350V. That way, the amp can only make 65 watts, but uses all four power tubes. It'll still rattle the windows, and I could use a good attenuater, but the sound is a bit softer.

Reeves has a 30 watt amp that has a built in attenuator after the output transformer...lets the power tubes rip.
 
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Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Christian (TGWIF) is the one who brought the power scaling technology to my attention. I always had issues with all the amps I've owned in that they were too loud for home use. Since I bought the Storm 50, those problems are in the past. The nice thing with power scaling is that the tone remains extremely close to the same whether your playing on 1 or 10.

I won't attempt to explain how it works, because I don't fully understand the workings of it. The article from LondonPower is a good start for those interested and Christian just might chime in here as well.
 
Re: Attenuators - any good for home playing?

Lewguitar said:
Using it to bring a loud amp down to bedroom levels is OK for practice...but it's not a very inspiring tone. Kind of thin and fizzy...but it's OK.

Lew
Click to expand...

So really it is better not to use them at all for bedroom practice. (Have no experiance, it was a strangley asked question it that makes any sense.. :D)
 
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