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Post subject: WEBER power soak anyone??
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:26 pm
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How effective are these? I am dieing for a fender tube amp but I rarely could turn it up to 11 and I don't have the cash for a THD hot plate. I think the Weber power soak is the least expensive. When you have it going, can you OD the power tubes or is it more like a volume pedal? Also, will your amp hum loudly since its being turned up so much?


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Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:04 pm
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These are attenuators. You're basically putting a mo-honkin' passive volume control on your speaker output of your amp, and then to the speaker. This is in order to get the "cranked up" sound out of your amp at high volume w/o waking the neighbors in a 3 block radius and causing yourself permanent hearing damage by actually turning the amp to 11. The current routed to your speaker is a fraction of what is going into the attenuator, so you hear a much lower volume even though you've maxed the amp.

As for the hum, it will increase along with the signal coming out of the amp since the gain will increase as you crank it up, but the attenuator will reduce all of it to a fraction of the total.

The "power soak" aspect converts this excess current into heat. They can also be used as "dummy loads", which is what a tech uses instead of a speaker to measure and adjust power out of the amp final stage without the above hearing complications. Some of these use resistors, others use speaker coils which are inductive and are more "natural" sounding (being similar to speakers). I've even seen dummys made out of light bulbs!

One warning. ANY time you use different speaker configurations, attenuators, etc., AVOID too low an impedance/resistance as this can and will fry the amp final stage if it's too low (if speaker fuses don't blow), like running an 8 ohm power amp with 4 or 2 ohm loads ("Tube/transistor OD!"). Also make sure the attenuator matches or exceeds the watt rating of the amp or you'll likely damage it and waste your money . Follow the instructions, have some idea what load your amp can handle, and exercise a little caution.

Have fun!


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