Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

[everdrone]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

well, its a good thing you are looking into this cause,

YOUR EARS ARE THE MOST VALUABLE GEAR YOU HAVE!

Did you hear that??? heh

if your body's alarms are going off, you need to listen to them. for example: ringing in ears, hears hurt cause too loud, body feels weird after massive amount of sound pressure in a small room with a full stack. other weird probs like headaches with eustachian tubes. I know...

tinnitus usually doesn't go away, and its a bummer. I would just play with what you need at practice to be heard properly, maybe less firepower with that 20 watt hovercraft, I want one! my amp is quiet with the built in attenuator and sounds good though so I dont have that excuse. and if volume is the gimmick like most doom bands, then ya bring out the big guns at the show.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

FYI - I've revisited every helpful suggestion in this thread, re-familiarized myself with your gear needs, and came up with the perfect solution for you:

Go buy a POD.

Yeah that's pretty funny.

I'm glad you found your ideal tonal promised land by slaving an amp into an amp or whatever, and it's a cool idea that I might use some day, but don't get all pissy and sarcastic at me just because your suggestion is way more expensive and complicated than what I want. I'm not trying to crank my amp to 11 and choke it to bedroom levels... I want something to calm it down a dB or three when I want to. Jeez.

well, its a good thing you are looking into this cause,

YOUR EARS ARE THE MOST VALUABLE GEAR YOU HAVE!

Did you hear that??? heh

if your body's alarms are going off, you need to listen to them. for example: ringing in ears, hears hurt cause too loud, body feels weird after massive amount of sound pressure in a small room with a full stack. other weird probs like headaches with eustachian tubes. I know...

tinnitus usually doesn't go away, and its a bummer. I would just play with what you need at practice to be heard properly, maybe less firepower with that 20 watt hovercraft, I want one! my amp is quiet with the built in attenuator and sounds good though so I dont have that excuse. and if volume is the gimmick like most doom bands, then ya bring out the big guns at the show.

Thanks for the advice and I'm totally with you on that... Normally I bring my Micro Terror to practice but I wanted to play with my new toy. When I do the LOUDLOUD stuff I am usually EQing specific low and mid frequencies that don't hurt my ears very much... I learned to hate high frequencies as a teenager at punk rock shows... Minimal tinnitus, maximal muscle massage.

For most gigs I plan on bringing the Micro Terror and the Orange OR120... then if my [volume reduction solution] for the OR120 makes it sound crappy, or I have weird problems with the big head, I can still get through the show with the Micro.

I just don't want to be the ******bag with a 20w hybrid brain on a big bad 4x12 cabinet with every knob cranked and still not sound big enough... and I don't want to take my precious 69 Bassman out to sketchy gigs at redneck bars.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

That's all I need... something to knock it down a notch or two.

I'm interested by the idea that an amp being attenuated to very quiet or silent levels can sound bad, but an amp attenuated to the max then slaved to another, smaller amp can sound amazing. I'll have to experiment with that technique eventually.

 

[B2D]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

I was gonna suggest one of Webers big-boy-pants MASS models, but it sounds like you have something figured out.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Nice to hear another vote of confidence for Weber. The Mass 200 just seems like the kind of thing a guy like me should own..

 

[uOpt]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Well, I'm no rocket scientist, but essentially the more you attenuate, the more of the amp's signal gets dissipated and the less of the amp's signal gets to the speaker.

The resulting tone sounds compressed. At extreme attenuation, it gets so compressed-sounding that it sounds like you're playing through the world's tiniest SS Crate using the world's tiniest speaker; completely dull, flat, cardboard box tone.

No, those clips are long gone... you'll have to try an attenuator some time if you haven't. They are good for a little shaving off, but beyond that the tone is crap.

Well there is no question that the speakers behave differently. They also distort in various interesting ways under load. The paper membrane only goes so far and many of us like speakers with wimpy magnets which makes me suspicious that there is significant magnetic saturation going on. Which obviously is different at lower power levels, if any.

I was just curious whether anybody measured that the waveform coming out of the amp is different. It is possible because the output transformer is high impedance and will react to changing impedance on part of the speakers. But I haven't seen anybody measure.

Theoretically the change from driving speakers harder should have more compression, not less, as you saturate the magnets and the cones can't follow.


ETA: the only unit I have is a Tom Scholz power soak. The fans of "proper" attenuators haven't been able to convince me that there is a significant improvement from them over a simple load resistance.

 

[everdrone]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Ya I get that way about my rickenbacker 4003 bass and my guitar rig with the yucky bars. always a great excuse to stockpile gear for GUITARMAGEDDON though! I am on my way to a micro terror and hovercraft ...GAS attack!!! Ill prolly stay away from the attenuator stuff, ask B2D about his attenuator run-in where an amp died for no reason, mighta been the attenuator...

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Build a resistive load box. Bridged T config. Find a calculator for it online that will drop you by 10db and spend the $20 in parts.

 

[dystrust]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

ETA: the only unit I have is a Tom Scholz power soak. The fans of "proper" attenuators haven't been able to convince me that there is a significant improvement from them over a simple load resistance.

Build a resistive load box. Bridged T config. Find a calculator for it online that will drop you by 10db and spend the $20 in parts.

It's entirely possible that a "proper" attenuator won't sound better than a Scholz power soak. The big difference is that a reactive load won't cause your amp's OT to overheat and fail. A friend of mine killed the OT in a '71 100W Super Lead with his power soak.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

the reactive load is there for variance in resistance from a magnet going through the motions of what a speaker magnet would do. Lots of soaks use L Pads for attenuation variation, and I think those L pads are prone to failure (personally). It's just another complicated thing that can go wrong. Resistive load boxes with a few big 300w resistors in it as power dividers have less to go wrong, and no mechanical components to speak of. If you want to take 10db off of your signal, any of them easy resistor ones, the Bridged T being the most complicated and most able to maintain tonal quality at high level of attenuation and are very simple and have a high degree of success.

load boxes aren't going to sound good. They're going to start shelving the sound the more you attenuate. Buy less efficient speakers or put them in an isocab if you need your monster amps to be quieter but still scintillate. I'm surprised Pockets hasn't looked more into isocabs. It's like buying a cab for a cab.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

From a physics standpoint I am really not prone to believe that resistor networks, as long as they don't fail, can cause output transformers to fail.

The more complicated attenuators are obviously more prone to failure. If you use a speaker coil you use a speaker coil and that can melt down.

In either case, if you listen to what comes out you would notice the lack of signal and could stop playing when the unit fails.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

I'm just rereading this thread and cracking up. It's so dang SDUGF.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Here we go. Check out this video by our very own kevlar3000 i found while stumbling around YouTube.

His 200w amp sounds pretty good with that Mass 200...

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

So I had a gig last Saturday. My amp repair guy is also my bassist and he brought a cool little outboard master volume that plugs into the FX loop. It did almost nothing even when it was turned all the way down.

The sound guy said, "That thing is retarded. Does it have a half power switch?" Had to use it turned down pretty quietly and use my Double Rock for distortion.

My amp repair guy seemed surprised to hear that I had read anything negative about Weber's products and said he'd used them with good results for a long time.

Now my only dilemma is that a Mass 200 for each of my monster amps would cost me about as much as one Hovercraft Dwarvenaut. So do I tame the beasts or just invest in something domesticated?

 

[everdrone]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

dont neuter your beasts!

I don't think 20 watt amp is the solution either, not enough umph for a jam or practice if you are playing heavy rock.

get an ORange thunderverb 50 like me, it is the perfect solution for this

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

You know he's got a couple Elder Giants up for sale.

 

[everdrone]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

I really want an elder giant. you can get an orange AD200 for $1850 through humbuckermusic.com if you email them for best price, so I want that more though.

Im broke as a joke, fortunately I have 3 gigworthy bass amps no tube bass amp tho cant really hear the tubes in a live mix enough to justify the sacrifice for now. maybe 10 years from now tho.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

Eh, just play guitar thru it with a fuzz pedal. Attenuation will come from the blood mist and shredded flesh hovering in a 3d 4th dimensional tesseract in midair that used to belong to the now-dead audience.

 

[Big Flannel]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

So I had a gig last Saturday. My amp repair guy is also my bassist and he brought a cool little outboard master volume that plugs into the FX loop. It did almost nothing even when it was turned all the way down.

The sound guy said, "That thing is retarded. Does it have a half power switch?" Had to use it turned down pretty quietly and use my Double Rock for distortion.

My amp repair guy seemed surprised to hear that I had read anything negative about Weber's products and said he'd used them with good results for a long time.

Now my only dilemma is that a Mass 200 for each of my monster amps would cost me about as much as one Hovercraft Dwarvenaut. So do I tame the beasts or just invest in something domesticated?

Look at it this way. Your rig is like a girlfriend, alright? Your "girlfriend" is having some issue with meth so you want to help her out. You sit down with your calculator and crunch the numbers and find that after the cost of sending her to "Rehab" she may still just not be the one for you.

Would you rather take the risk or upgrade to somebody that isn't screaming at you all the time?

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Let's Talk About Relatively Extreme Attenuation

I think its more akin to having a girlfriend that I'm crazy about but nobody else can stand her.

It's not self-destructive... It's bold and beautiful and not everybody can handle it.