Taming a Tweed - Attenuator vs OD Pedal

ryanverbena

I know the correct answer is to crank and use the volume knob on the guitar, which I happily do during waking hours. But I'm wanting to have an option to get my Two Rock Burnside past noon on the volume, without shaking the walls too much (or at all). 

So I guess that's the first thing to stress here - I'm not trying to get cranked tweed tones at bedroom levels. I'm after a nice natural compression and break up at lower volumes than I normally need. 

I'm considering either getting a tweed style pedal (A Les Luis for example), or going down the attenuator route - currently eyeing an Iron Man 2 Mini (8 Ohms only is annoying but I have an Alnico Blue speaker I could swap into my amp to make it compatible). A cheaper option, and one I could mount inside the amp would be Dominics Dr Z Brake Lite that is for sale on here. 

Wondering if anyone has had experience taming a tweed going down either the pedal route or the attenuator route - in which case I'd love to hear any advice or recommendations. I hear that certain attenuators are better with certain amp styles etc, so in that case I'm wondering which might be best suited to mine. 

Cheers!

ICBM

The Brake Lite works really well with small tweed-type amps.

I don't think a pedal will give you the same sort of compression, unless the amp is already overdriven as well. So the answer is probably both, but attenuator first.

ecc83

I  can't help you with choice of attenuator/amp, ICBM is your man there but I don't think you need to worry much about the SPEAKER impedance. Once you have inserted a few dB of loss the impedance the amp 'sees' is virtually just that of the load box. The important thing is that the load on the amp os about right (it is not needed to be as desperately accurate as some manuals say but since, by definition, you will be driving the amp hard, best to load it to within 20% of the transformer tapping.)

Yes, any power "calibration" goes out the window but that can only ever be very approximate and you will 'tune' things with Mk1 Lug anyway!

Dave.

Winny_Pooh

5e3 owner here. No pedal will really give you that sound. A 4 knob spark is decent for a light drive but anything else will add it's own tone. Get an attenuator, get the amp a tiny bit dirty and then any drive in front will be so much more characterful. 

mburekenge

ICBM said:

The Brake Lite works really well with small tweed-type amps.

I don't think a pedal will give you the same sort of compression, unless the amp is already overdriven as well. So the answer is probably both, but attenuator first.

The Brake Lite was recommended to me by Mark from Victoria amps.

ryanverbena

Thank you all for the wisdom, attenuator seems to be the ticket.

As I mentioned, there is a brake lite for sale on the forum but I’ve also had someone PM me with a trade offer for a their Ironman Mini II (for one of my pedals listed in the classifieds).

@ecc83 so if I’m understand you correctly - the 8ohm rated ToneKing is really only referring to the amp? So as long as I run it through the correct output, I can still use my 16ohm speaker with it?

Now it’s simply deciding which attenuator, trade for the IronMan or buy the Brake Lite. 

ecc83

ryanverbena said:

Thank you all for the wisdom, attenuator seems to be the ticket.

As I mentioned, there is a brake lite for sale on the forum but I’ve also had someone PM me with a trade offer for a their Ironman Mini II (for one of my pedals listed in the classifieds).

@ecc83 so if I’m understand you correctly - the 8ohm rated ToneKing is really only referring to the amp? So as long as I run it through the correct output, I can still use my 16ohm speaker with it?

Now it’s simply deciding which attenuator, trade for the IronMan or buy the Brake Lite. 

I don't know if any of those attenuators have a total bypass? If that is the case then the 16R speaker becomes the only load on the amp but even this is not really a problem* so long as you are not driving the nuts off it. Once you have some attenuation dialled in, no problem.

*N.B. There are some guitar amps that are said to be a bit feeble in this regard. I don't know of your Fender is one such but again, ICBM will tell you if you need to be especially careful.

Dave

57Deluxe

Tweeds and especially 5e3s suffer from flubiness and bluster when dialled up. Although not mentioned in clip below, you can nonetheless hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrRRjIIT_OM

So I set out to once again experiment with my Tweed Deluxe and from employing a very unlikely Hi Gain overdrive companion (NUX Amp Sim) I stumbled on a cool trick. I unjumpered the channels (something I have always done as 'everyone' has said gives the best drive tone) and setting the  amp volume to the lowest it will go without cutting out, then using the volume of the Amp Sim to lift the level, results in all the juicy Tweed tone without ear splitting volume and bluster. Adding my Tremolo pedal also helps here too as gives an additional volume push in a lower frequency band that helps balance out the overall signal. So I can get that vintage Tweed Vibrolux /Strat sound shown above (and then some) and save £5,000.

 He does beat me on having a vintage car collection to play amongst though

Winny_Pooh

^^^ a rangemaster (more grit) or 4 knob spark/Timmy (more smooth) is great for this as you can cut lows as you boost the input.

There's also a neg feedback/bass cut mod on Robinette's website you can add on a 2 or 3 way switch to tighten up the overdrive. Works nicely to clean up some hairiness.

Alex2678

I also really like lowering the volume on the amp and boosting it back up with a pedal, though mine is a deluxe reverb 

uncledaddy

I have a Brake Lite in my Princeton Reverb for home use. With it on the lowest setting I still can't get to breakup at any reasonable TV volume. If I was looking for a tweed style pedal, the Wampler Tweed 57 is pretty good, but out of production.

rze99

I'm a 5e3 owner (custom build) and I use an attenuator to get the sound I want at the volume I can use at the time which makes it great for a studio and home use to get "that" sound. A dirt pedal still sounds good but it's different. 

Axe_meister

I have a Note Notes Captor 8, 20db attenuation. Unforfortuantly fixed attenuation. It's a true reactive load. Tested it against a cheap Behringer load box. It was night and day. The Behringer killing all treble.

mgaw

Origin Deluxe 55

Keefy

mgaw said:

Origin Deluxe 55

Exactly what I came here to say.

fretfinder

I’ve got a Dr Z Brake Lite on the way and looking forward to seeing how it works with my Vicky 20112 which is relatively new to me. So far I’ve used various OD pedals with the amp and they all sound great to my ears - Peacekeeper, Zendrive, Cruiser Deuce, Klon clones, even a Fallout Cloud BC108 which sounds amazing on low sustain settings!

57Deluxe

...after years of abiding by the consensus of jumpering the channels and interacting the volumes to get a 'better' drive tone, I have adopted a completely different approach. I employ just the one volume channel to the point of where it just becomes audible and then using a pedal with a lot of signal (not drive particularly - NUX Am Sim in particular ) and then my PROEL DS10 to regulate to taste and end up with the best tones I have ever gotten from my Tweed Deluxe in 17 years of ownership AND without any of the typical flub and bluster  - which might suit Neil Young but not my ears in my dining room.

soma1975

I've used an iron man mini II with a 16ohm speaker for over a year no problems

ICBM

soma1975 said:

I've used an iron man mini II with a 16ohm speaker for over a year no problems

As long as the amp and the attenuator match, the speaker impedance is irrelevant when you’re attenuating by more than about -3dB. The amp sees the attenuator as the load, not the speaker.

soma1975

Yup it was you that okayed me to do this, ta!