attenuator a must!!!!! discuss please!

ThePrettyDamned

Adolfhipster;273846" said:

Why can't someone build an amp that sounds great at normal volumes and high volumes.....
Bloody valves are the problem right?

If modelling technology was any good I'd go down that route but I've never heard a decent simple of a real valve amp....

Axe fx or kemper? They're half decent, judging by the number of top artists that use them.

Blackstar id core are cheap but sound really good.

I like the sound of a high watt amp with the volume down. Then again, I like preamp gain so it's a bit different, and even then they sound better when above home volume.

If you want power amp drive, maybe look at an mjw or something, they build in a clever gizmo to help get power section drive at lower volume.

p90fool

I had a mate who lived in Jersey (which had a blanket 40mph limit) who bought a Carrera. He constantly complained about how grouchy and lumpy it was at slow speeds.

He didn't blame the designers though, and was happy to acknowledge that it was all about looks for him. He did also have a Ford Focus though, probably his equivalent of a "bedroom amp".

crunchman

I've found that the power scaling that drops the voltage to the power valves normally sounds better than an attenuator.  I don't know how easy it would be to get that fitted to a Supersonic.

For the money you are spending on a Supersonic, you are getting close to Kemper territory.  That may be a better option.

Panama_Jack666

You lose quite a bit of the dynamics with an attenuator. If you're trying to sound like Eric through a cranked Marshall. Attenuator isn't the answer. The speaker won't react the same at a lower volume even though the amp is being driven.

Just get a 1W tube amp with a big speaker. Wienbrock make a nice one! I think that can go down to 0.1W as well and it sounds great.

Adolfhipster

Had a weinbrock. ...and regret at swapping it.

Panama_Jack666

Adolfhipster said:

Had a weinbrock. ...and regret at swapping it.

I'm GASSING for one!

Adolfhipster

They are fantastic......hard to find though

Panama_Jack666

Adolfhipster said:

They are fantastic......hard to find though

There was a 1 watter on here not so long ago for a fantastic price but I missed it. I think it was about £350. Me mate managed to get it though and I was able to have a go. I loved it! I've been a fan since meeting Rob a while back and seeing Ron Sayer put them through their paces!

lustycourtier

Panama_Jack666 said:

Adolfhipster said:

Had a weinbrock. ...and regret at swapping it.

I'm GASSING for one!

Robs doing occatioanl one off builds at moment. There was a gringo last week on ebay that went for a great price.

lustycourtier

Lew said:

siraxeman;273831" said:

[quote="Lew;273654"]30W aint that loud. I've spent all weekend running a 30W at max volume and it has an attenuator that goes to 1/8thW.

I bet you wouldn't say that with an ac30. Oh no. And I'd you did you would be very very naughty as well as on your way to becoming deaf.
[/quote]

30W is 30W no?

Nope. Speaker effienicecy plays a massive role also. Guitarist did a test a year or 2 ago and an AC30 was louder than a Marshall 100w plexi.

ICBM

lustycourtier said:

Lew said:

30W is 30W no?

Nope. Speaker effienicecy plays a massive role also. Guitarist did a test a year or 2 ago and an AC30 was louder than a Marshall 100w plexi.

Both speaker efficiency and amp dynamic response are almost as important as outright power, but they also measured it wrongly - too close to the speakers.

An AC30 is not louder than a Marshall Plexi, although it's very loud for a 30W amp and if you measure directly in front of one speaker, it will be louder than measuring the Marshall the same way, because it's a more efficient speaker receiving slightly more power.

Having recently tested a Super Lead 100 full stack I can assure you that it is louder than an AC30 .

Phil_aka_Pip

the only thing that I can think of as being louder than a Super Lead 100 stack is two stacks

littlethoughts

This might sound a bit stupid but one of the best things I've found for volume attenuation at home is to put my amp on a chair and build a little pillow fort around it. the chair isolates it from the floor a little and lets airflow get into the back of the amp for cooling etc. Then the wall of cushions can be varied in thickness for different attenuation. Obviously some cushions work better than others and you can overdo it so it gets a bit muffled, but just for simply "taking the edge off" it works pretty well. I'm sure I read somewhere about someone making a sound proofed box for their amp so they could really crank it at home. Amp suspended on a spring-mounted platform, good quality isolation foam lining the box.

boom:

http://www.vocalbooth.com/products/vb-guitar-amp-enclosures/

"Makes a perfect late night practice speaker cabinet—you get the sound and feel of your live rig but at a level not much louder than a practice amp. It will help keep your neighbors happy"

NervousJohn

Panama_Jack666;274049" said:

The speaker won't react the same at a lower volume even though the amp is being driven.

This. Any amplifier is basically a device to convert electrical signals to sound waves and the loudspeakers are the critical bit of this chain. To make the speaker move you need a certain amount of power (Low frequencies need more power than high) and if you attenuate the signal or power scale or use a master volume it will change how the amplifier sounds. Hence the "loudness" buttons on old hifis.
A small amp with a light weight speaker cone (and probably a very low speaker power rating) would be an ideal solution here but I've no if that exists.

ICBM

That's a myth. Speakers are actually much less needing to be 'driven' than most people think. While there are a very few that are a bit stiff-sounding at very low volume (V30s are a good example), most perform perfectly well at any power input below the point they start to go into thermal compression, which is not far below their maximum power rating.

While there are reasons why attenuators can affect the tone at very low volume settings, almost all of it is the simple psycho-acoustic effect of lower volume. It's possible to record the same sound using an attenuator at various different settings, then normalise the recordings and play them back at the same final level. This has been done - there was a demo with a THD Hotplate years ago on TGP, and you could hear almost no difference. Not none, but close enough that it's clear that the attenuator does not have anywhere near as much effect as you think when you use one in a room and hear the volume level changing.

martinw

ThePrettyDamned said:

 If you want power amp drive, maybe look at an mjw or something, they build in a clever gizmo to help get power section drive at lower volume.

Power Scaling. It works well.

I did a Supersonic quite recently, and the customer was very pleased with the results.

ICBM

Surprisingly given that it's a cruder method, I actually prefer attenuation to power scaling - although I haven't tried my own favourite amps with power scaling, just other ones that I perhaps didn't like as much anyway.

Adolfhipster

Could someone explain power scaling?

martinw

Adolfhipster said:

Could someone explain power scaling?

It's a system that uses voltage regulation of the output valve anodes, screens and grid bias where appropriate, to reduce the output power of the amp. It goes from the amp's maximum power down to as low as desired, via a rotary control, but typically minimum is preset to just barely audible.

Unlike an attenuator which dissipates the excess power as heat, Power Scaling reduces power output at source.

More info here:

http://www.londonpower.com/

capo4th

The Tone King attenuators are expensive but is now built into most of their amps