Attenuator Questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Milnoque
  • Start date Start date
I gotta disagree with soundchaser- I was QUITE pleased with the tone I got from my dimed or 6 or 7 or 8'ed Deluxe Reverb. And I agree, Milnoque, pedals don't give the tone an attenuator does. I say, go for it.
 
stevieb said:
I gotta disagree with soundchaser- I was QUITE pleased with the tone I got from my dimed or 6 or 7 or 8'ed Deluxe Reverb. And I agree, Milnoque, pedals don't give the tone an attenuator does. I say, go for it.
Click to expand...

----Thanks,
 
FWIW I recently bought the Weber and am very happy with it. In the past, I had used a Scholtz and the Weber sounds much better.

In addition, the Weber has a bypass switch, the volume knob is not stepped and it has a direct out (that I have not been able to get a good sound out of, but I haven't tried that hard either).

Great product/Great price
 
The PW-5's have both a bypass switch and a direct out- and I think I prefer the stepped knob- easier to remember what setting I used before, with only 7 (not infinate) choices.
 
i use a weber attenuator, with great success.


but i do it differently...

the rig:

guitar goes to the pedalboard, with the requisite overdrive, compressor, noise gate, tuner, wah and vibe....

that goes into a 1981 Mesa Boogie Mark2B 60 watt short shell head....

out of that, directly into the Palmer PDI-09, which is how i capture the sound that goes on the recording.

out of that, into a Weber Mass lite attenuator, so i can bring the amp volume down for monitoring at normal inside-studio levels..

out of the weber, into a AVATAR vintage closed back cab, with a Celestion Heritage G12.

i will mic that cab sometimes, using either a sm57, or a AT4033, and blending it with the direct Palmer sound.

A Yamaha DG stomp effects pedal, is in the effects loop of the boogie, which is great live, but i never use it for recording..

i always record bone dry, and add effects at mix down.
 
always size the attenuator to handle double the watts you'll have connected...

my boogie (at 60 watts) can peak close to 100w.....

so i use a 100 watt attenuator.

for a 25 watt amp, i'd select a 50 w attenuator.

etc etc...

what you lose, by going too large (100w attenuator) matched to a low watt amp (5 watts) is the CONTROL to dial in the volume..
 
I want to thank all of you that took the time to respond to this thread. In the end I decided on a Weber Micro-Mass. It's rated at 15 watts and the amp I wanted it for is 12 watts. Thanks to you I was aware that this was taking a chance, but since I wasn't after the sound of the amp full out I decided it would be OK. The Weber site recommends it for the blues Jr which is a more powerful 12 watts than my amp.

So far I'm very happy with the results. I tried the amp, dimed and drastically attenuated, for about 45 minutes just as an experiment. Nothing heated up. You can hear a bit of muffling of the tone at that level, but it's a much better tone than I've gotten from any pedal I've tried. It's going to be fun to wank around with those settings in the future but it wasn't the tone I was after. Dialed in to suit my taste the results are excellent. I wanted the amp to break up just a little when I played hard and to have clean compression when playing softer passages. The attenuator gives me that in spades.

Again, Thanks for your input everyone.
 
I'm late to the thread, as often happens -- here are a couple of subjective data points:

I've got a Weber Micro Mass and a Marshall Power Brake. I got the Power Brake (100 watt rating, I think) to use with my 50 watt 2204 JCM-800 half stack, and the Mini Mass to use with small amps.

I cranked the Marshall up to 6 or 7 (lethally loud in the bedroom setting but for the attenuator), and it was kind of cool, but there was also an almost supersonic whine that made me feel like I was doing something bad/dangerous/stupid, and so I stopped. I've played the amp at that level (larger space) unattenuated before and it did sound different (better) - not so say that the power brake was sucking tone, but the amp didn't sound like it was about to explode (like my skull) when it was wide open. I resolved not to attenuate the Marshall any more.

On the other hand, the Power Brake sounds *really* good with my Valve Jr., even though the wattage rating is 20x overkill (not to mention the price multiple :confused: which is totally silly)

I use the micro mass with a Blues Jr. and some other small amps, including the Valve Jr. I can't get much use out of the treble and bass controls - they pretty much have to be dimed or I don't like the sound, except that sometimes I push down the treble if it sounds raspy. The line out doesn't sound good to me at all. Overall, the Micro Mass gets more use than the Power Brake, but that's mainly because it's smaller and easier to move around. I like the Power Brake better on the Valve Jr., but they're about the same on the other small amps (and no, I haven't tried the Micro Mass on the Marshall :D)
 
Antichef - try the Marshall with something other than the Power Break. For one, I've heard (haven't tried one myself) that as far as attenuators go the Marshall just isn't that good, and for another I've heard some scary reliability issues with the things melting down and taking the amp's transformer with it.

I like the THD Hot Plates personally, but I've also heard the Webers are excellent.
 
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