Volume in loop

Alterlifeson

Does anyone know why some people add a volume pot/pedal in the loop of their amps? I came across a picture the other day of a small box with 1 knob that only controlled the volume. Is this some kind of make shift attenuator? I don't really see how this would be different to just turning down the power amp volume.

Is anyone able to shed some light on this for me? I might just be an idiot!

not_the_dj

Use it as a pure volume lift/cut for solos etc, instead of boosting the front end and adding gain.

I had one, you set the amp to be the lead volume, then dial it back with the pot to a lower volume, then you can switch between the two easily.

Alterlifeson

That makes sense, but I've also seen ones that sit on to of the amp, no footswitch either. Sort of like this:

not_the_dj

Looks similar to the EWS, which has a big knob ;-) so you can adjust it with your foot...

http://ews-us.com/item_volumeCtrl.php?item=custom

ICBM

It's just a handy and cheap way of getting extra control at a different point in the circuit from normal, essentially by adding an extra master volume. It's useful if you've got an amp where the normal volume controls go from 'off' to 'loud' over too small a turn to make it easy to control them (eg Fender Hotrods) or where there's no overall master volume and you want to set the two channel volumes and then turn the whole amp up or down without having to rebalance them, or where you might want to get a slightly-broken-up sound from a clean channel at lower volume.

Gadget

... or where your amp has a very basic fx loop, where level matching may be required.

Roger

I've also seen these punted as 'attenuators' so you can "get cranked amp sounds at bedroom levels!"

They are nothing of the sort attenuators work between the power amp and speaker section. All you would do is push the pre-amp gain and turn down the output - whereas the attenuator will allow you to push both the preamp and the poweramp stages and then reduce output to the speaker.

Alterlifeson

Thanks guys, makes sense to me. My Jet City was quite hard to get right volume wise at home, so one of these could have made some sense.

clarkefan

They're very useful.  They are an attenuator, just not a power attenuator.

I use one in the loop of my DSL to floor the preamp vol and gain controls as much or as little as I want and set overall actual volume in the room with it.  Without that extra volume control the same settings would be very very loud.

Unfortunately it can't be used to crank the power amp section (thanks for explaining that @ICBM ), you need a power attenuator for that.

Telejester

I bought one off exorcist here on fb yesterday for using with my ht5r head in the bedroom, it really beefs up the low end and I'm very happy with it indeed, have it dual locked onto my pedalboard.

Alterlifeson

clarkefan said:

They're very useful.  They are an attenuator, just not a power attenuator.

I use one in the loop of my DSL to floor the preamp vol and gain controls as much or as little as I want and set overall actual volume in the room with it.  Without that extra volume control the same settings would be very very loud.

Unfortunately it can't be used to crank the power amp section (thanks for explaining that @ICBM ), you need a power attenuator for that.

Telejester said:

I bought one off exorcist here on fb yesterday for using with my ht5r head in the bedroom, it really beefs up the low end and I'm very happy with it indeed, have it dual locked onto my pedalboard.

Which ones do you have out of interest?

Telejester

Alterlifeson said:

clarkefan said:

They're very useful.  They are an attenuator, just not a power attenuator.

I use one in the loop of my DSL to floor the preamp vol and gain controls as much or as little as I want and set overall actual volume in the room with it.  Without that extra volume control the same settings would be very very loud.

Unfortunately it can't be used to crank the power amp section (thanks for explaining that @ICBM ), you need a power attenuator for that.

Telejester said:

I bought one off exorcist here on fb yesterday for using with my ht5r head in the bedroom, it really beefs up the low end and I'm very happy with it indeed, have it dual locked onto my pedalboard.

Which ones do you have out of interest?

The one exorcist sold me was a deanos amp boost passive volume box. In the bedroom i keep a ht5r head and zilla cab, I put the deano last in the line of pedals going into the loop and cranked the amp. You can lower the volume to inaudible if you want and I immediately noticed a lot more whumph in the low end.

clarkefan

@Alterlifeson , I built a 4 - gang patchbay and put the vol control in it on the connection for the Send cable, so it drops the level coming out of the preamp before the signal goes to the delay in the loop.

While I was at it I also added a second pot to cut bass, but I haven't found that very useful, I think I need to experiment with different cap values.

Marktigere1

I use a Bright Onion Volume pedal in the FX loop of my Jetcity JCA22H.

The FX loop without it causes clipping of my pedals when the Master volume is high and so I used the volume pedal to slightly reduce the signal level coming from the FX Send to the pedals.  Made a massive difference.

I now use the channel volumes on 'full' and the volume pedal as my master volume.

Sounds great and has made the Jetcity FX loop very useable.

I prefer this to using the Jetenuator as its less faff and allows the correct use of the loop.

Cheers

Exorcist

The one I sold to Telejester I used to use in the loop of my Fuchs 4 aces - that thing had to be deafening before it sounded any good (the gain channel was terrible under a quarter of the way up). This worked just like another master volume between the pre and power amp. Worked very well for me, I read Andy Fuchs comment about it in a forum once, he thought about adding into the casino series as another MV I think. Obviously not for all amps, but for non MV amps with a loop, or ones with twitchy 'all or nothing' controls they can be great. They are just a passive pot in a box nothing clever, you could build one easily if you could be bothered. I actually lent it to Telejester as I'm not using it, and he wanted to try one, glad it worked worked well for him, he ended up buying it from me.

JerkMoans

ICBM said:

It's just a handy and cheap way of getting extra control at a different point in the circuit from normal, essentially by adding an extra master volume. It's useful if you've got an amp where the normal volume controls go from 'off' to 'loud' over too small a turn to make it easy to control them (eg Fender Hotrods) or where there's no overall master volume and you want to set the two channel volumes and then turn the whole amp up or down without having to rebalance them, or where you might want to get a slightly-broken-up sound from a clean channel at lower volume.

This ^^

i scored this nifty little device for precisely this purpose.

https://imgur.com/a/BSww8

Alterlifeson

Exorcist said:

The one I sold to Telejester I used to use in the loop of my Fuchs 4 aces - that thing had to be deafening before it sounded any good (the gain channel was terrible under a quarter of the way up). This worked just like another master volume between the pre and power amp. Worked very well for me, I read Andy Fuchs comment about it in a forum once, he thought about adding into the casino series as another MV I think. Obviously not for all amps, but for non MV amps with a loop, or ones with twitchy 'all or nothing' controls they can be great. They are just a passive pot in a box nothing clever, you could build one easily if you could be bothered. I actually lent it to Telejester as I'm not using it, and he wanted to try one, glad it worked worked well for him, he ended up buying it from me.

Great! If I return to valves I'll definitely consider one of the these, one of the reasons I moved on the jet City was the twitchy volume at low levels. This sounds like a nice solution. 

Telejester

Alterlifeson said:

Exorcist said:

The one I sold to Telejester I used to use in the loop of my Fuchs 4 aces - that thing had to be deafening before it sounded any good (the gain channel was terrible under a quarter of the way up). This worked just like another master volume between the pre and power amp. Worked very well for me, I read Andy Fuchs comment about it in a forum once, he thought about adding into the casino series as another MV I think. Obviously not for all amps, but for non MV amps with a loop, or ones with twitchy 'all or nothing' controls they can be great. They are just a passive pot in a box nothing clever, you could build one easily if you could be bothered. I actually lent it to Telejester as I'm not using it, and he wanted to try one, glad it worked worked well for him, he ended up buying it from me.

Great! If I return to valves I'll definitely consider one of the these, one of the reasons I moved on the jet City was the twitchy volume at low levels. This sounds like a nice solution. 

You try a fender hot rod deluxe amp on the clean channel dude. It's set volume at 0, breathe on it, look at it whilst trying to move it a little with the powers of telekinesis, touch it with the outermost tip of a fingernail.......WHAM......every window in the house blown in.

What a stupidly designed amp

clarkefan

Brian Wampler has a vid on YouTube showing how to build and use a volume pot in a box for exactly this reason, the stupid hair trigger vol control on the HRD. 

In his thread on his gig experience with his Katana, @p90fool describes using a volume pedal very creatively which has me thinking, maybe that's the next step for this.  A vol pedal would give total control on the fly instead of the set and forget nature of a pot in a box.  Yeah, nice