I finally got my Aracom last week and the difference is night and day. There is an ever so slight difference between the clean unattenuated tone and the attenuated tone set with the least amount of attenuation. That said, all of the beautiful characteristics of the tone are preserved. The bedroom level feature is nice and preserves the tone as well but the loss of head room takes away from the experience of the amp. There are 6 levels of step attenuation from A (least amount) to F (most amount, variable control down to bedroom level). At step E, I hear everything I want to hear coming from my amp. All of the overtones, harmonics, string separation, variation in tone with volume control changes on the guitar etc. I haven’t gigged with it yet, but I can see step D will probably do the trick for most small venues. I’m a tone lover through and through and this is the best I’ve heard so with that in mind I’m overlooking the fact that it’s the size of a small amp head.