There is a guy on YouTube pitching a device called a Hot-Plate it's for controlling the output for an excessively powerful amp so that it can be toned down and used in a smaller space yet allow you the options of desired distortion. any of you guys ever used one.
----Danny,

A THD brand Hot Plate? It's been around a long time and it's well respected but I've never used that particular brand. In fact, the only power attenuator I've used is my early '80s Altair PW-5 (one of the first and crudest attenuators). The Altair is a simple bank of resistors so it messes with the impedance, has no reactance, and has no tone circuits. If you try to turn a super loud amp into a quiet one it sounds horrible, and it's probably hard on the tubes and/or output transformer (but it sounds bad enough that you won't do that for long). I use it with rugged Fender-style amps that don't care too much about impedance -- I wouldn't risk it with a Marshall or Vox.

Despite that, it works very well if you just need to knock the volume down a little to get into your amp's sweet spot. I still use it sometimes to get a little power tube crunch from a 10 watt amp at apartment levels.

But attenuators have gotten much more refined over the past 30 years. Newer designs mimic actual speaker loads much better and don't mess up the impedance as much. They aren't hard on amps now -- the harder you push the tubes the faster they wear, so if you're using an attenuator to let you crank your amp up higher the tubes will wear faster. But they won't smoke your output transformer (unless it's got some other problem and would blow up at high volume even without the attenuator).

Most people say that you still can't turn a super loud amp into a bedroom amp. You can knock off a little more volume than with an Altair and have it sound ok. But I've found that master volumes have improved a lot over the past 30 years too so I haven't bothered trying the newer ones. Besides THD, Weber makes a large variety of attenuators with good reputations. There are lots of other brands, many of them much more expensive than THD.

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There are a couple of eBay vendors selling inexpensive boxes with volume knobs that go into an amp's effects loop. Those aren't power attenuators -- they cut the signal before the power tubes, not after the power tubes. Those boxes work well for amps that have abrupt volume controls (they were originally designed specifically to deal with the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe's touchy volume knobs) and they'd work well on non-master volume amps that have effects loops. But despite those vendors' claims, they don't let you push the power tubes harder (just the preamp tubes).

Another (and from what I've read and heard from actual users, a BETTER) option is the Dr. Z Brake Lite (made for amps less than 45 watts) or the Dr. Z Air Brake (for amps up to 100 watts)...

Dr. Z supposedly fixed the tone-sucking and impedance issues of the old power soaks and attenuators. I'd like to give one a shot, but it's hardto find a retailer with a money-back guarantee, and if it doesn't work as I want it to, that's an awfully expensive paper weight.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

We had a lead player at one time in our group that was talented at everything except turning down his Marshall.

We bought a Tom Sholz "power soak" unit, it worked well for him to get "his sound" but be manageable volume wise. Don't know if they even make them anymore but it worked pretty well for us.

Hi Danny, I've used one quite a bit. A Marshall Powerbrake in between my JCM 800 and whatever cab I decide to use.

What I can tell you is that they all change the sound of the amp. Simply because an attenuated amps speaker is not going to push as much air as an unattenuated amps.
THD, Scholtz, Weber and pretty much everyone else that makes em these days puts an eq signature in the mix which further changes the sound of the amp. They simply brand it as 'New fangled wizardry so the attenuator doesn't change the sound of your amp'.

It's a marketing gimmick that is too close to a lie.

If you are using a 50watt amp. This little gizmo is the Bee's barnacles
http://www.hallamplification.com/main.html?src=%2F#2,2
Yes it changes the sound of your amp/drive. Simply because as said previously the speaker is not pushing as much air.
So really, to get the sound of your amp at lower volumes you need either an attenuator or the VVR, with a speaker capable of producing the same sound as your speaker but with a lot less power running through it.

Attenuators aint bad. But they have to be used with care. Lower the amp volume a tad and attenuate less to get the better sound.

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No no and no

Thanks for the real story guys. Like S.A. said it's an expensive paper weight if it doesn't give you what your looking for.
----Danny,

I like the Weber attenuators, much cheaper, let's you select impedance too, works well if you want to quiet down up to a point. But just like any of them if your amp is way up and the attenuator is way down it will sound like poop.

Stratofiedmind

It's not an attenuator. It doesn't allow the power valves to see the full output of the preamp section. So the power valves can never get to overdrive. It's more like a channel volume control for amps that don't have a master volume mate. All attenuators sit between the speaker out socket and the speaker. Please don't do that with it, you'll either bust the output transformer or the box.
It definitely has it's uses on some amps and I'm glad you're happy with it.

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No no and no

I should break my posts up into shorter multiple posts. People always get bored and skip my final paragraphs. And it would increase my post count.

The effects loop volume box was designed by Steve Dallman many years ago and posted on the FDP (Fender Discussion Page -- I hope there's no unwritten rule about mentioning the Forum that FMIC used to sponsor) in response to multiple threads about the HRD's touchy gain knobs at low volumes.

He doesn't much care that a couple of guys started assembling them and selling them on eBay. It's a volume control in a box with two jacks -- it's not really patentable or proprietary.

But for some reason it bugs the heck out of me that they imply they came up with the idea for the box themselves and that they imply it can do things that it can't.

DD,
I used one for 6 months, If its just the driven sound your after they do work, They change the sound of your amp though. The clean chimey fender sound muddys up, you do get a saturated tube tone but its just not quite right, I persisted with it for a while until i realised it was a waste of time and sold it. I am constantly searching for good quiet tone, i don't think it exsists.

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A friend let me try out an attenuator (it might have been a THD, I've forgotten) on my old Marshall Master Volume. In the end, I decided that the Master Volume feature gave me about the same sound, so no need to spend any cash!

Of course YMMV.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.