What? Less gear? I must be speaking blasphemy, especially considering I’m such a gear freak – especially with my proclivity for pedals. But there’s also a practical side to this, as I am also a gigging musician. And especially when I do solo gigs, having less gear means less trips to the car. So as much as I can consolidate, I do. I was thinking about this because Christmas time through the New Year is usually a very busy time for me as far as gigs are concerned. For the past month, I’ve had at least three gigs each weekend, playing parties and other events. So you can see that I’m fairly sensitive to lugging gear.
So here I am in a coffee shop this morning, having put the finishing touches on my latest gear review on Aracom Amps RoxBox. In the article I mentioned that Channel 2 suffered from being flat at lower volumes, and that I ultimately solved the problem by running the amp through an attenuator between he power amp and speaker. I’ve had to do that practically every tube amp I’ve tested, so it got me to thinking: Why don’t more manufacturers just add these to their amps? I suppose production cost has a lot to do with it, but amp makers such as Faustine Amps have a -18db reactive attenuator built into their Harlequin line of amps and the Fender Princeton Studio also has a built-in attenuator as well. It’s a cool feature, and one that will allow you to get power tube saturation at lower output volumes.
Let me explain what I mean by way of a diagram:
As you can see, the traditional master volume circuit contains an attenuator between the pre-amp and the power amp. This means that you can crank the pre-amp and get pre-amp distortion, while limiting power to the power amp; thus limiting output volume. But it also means that in many cases, you won’t get power amp distortion unless you crank the master, which tends to be too loud, especially in small clubs and restaurants. But in the second illustration, with a second attenuator between the power amp and the speaker, it is now possible to crank the master volume to get power tube saturation while limiting overall output. I currently do this with the use of a Dr. Z Air Brake. But going back to the topic of this article, it’s just another piece of gear that I have to bring with me to a gig. Ugh!
In addition to production cost, there is a danger of possibly burning out the power tubes if you really overdrive them. I’ve done it to my Fender Hot Rod, by turning the attenuator to maximum attenuation, and diming the Drive knob for too long a time. Not good.
As I mentioned above, Faustine does this with their Harlequin line of amps (not sure about the others), and while -18db of attenuation may seem like a lot, it’s actually not that much – it takes the edge off. There must be a happy medium, say -24db or maybe -30db? Who knows? But whatever… this is a case where less gear is much better!
Less is definately more.
I’m a bit of a minimalist when it comes to guitar. Sure, I love messin’ around with a big, full pedalboard as much as the next dude, but having less gear means not only less hauling of said gear, but less places for things to go wrong and less time spent figuring out what exactly went wrong when something does.
Most of the time, I plug my Strat directly into my Hot Rod Deluxe. I’ll often stick a CryBaby inbetween, but never much more.
It’s a Zen thing.
or just buy a boogie mk iv – as far as I’m concerned, it’s the ultimate guitar amplifier at any volume level – it’s easily loud enough to compete with marshall stacks (I’ve done this – and it’s just a 1×12″ combo!) yet you can tone it down to do late night recording in an apartment building (seriously)
it runs in either simul-class (2 tubes in class A, 2 in class A/B) or straight class A (by disabling the A/B pair) – you can switch the tubes between pentode and triode operation and there’s even a “tweed power” setting that cuts power even further – it even takes a variety of tubes (6L6, 6V6, EL84)
I used to use a ton of pedals, now I just the the mk iv, a wah pedal and a les paul and I couldn’t be happier
I’ve been eying the Boogie Mark IV for awhile, and haven’t written any reviews on it even though I’ve played it several times (besides what’s been written that I wouldn’t cover?) But I keep on running into awesome amps like Reason amps that have tons of vibe as well. The master on the SM25 is awesome, and I can get happening tones at pretty much any volume.
I have just ordered an attenuator from Weber for my Genz Benz Black Pearl, even though you can switch it down to 2 tubes and then halve the wattage again by switching from Pentode to Triode so it is 7.5 watts, it is still really loud and I can’t drive the output tubes enough at home without an attenuator.
The Weber is a great attenuator. I finally went with the Dr. Z Air Brake, and it has helped immensely!
Well the Weber arrived today, here’s a photo:
http://flickr.com/photos/freaksauce/3146744612/
Just need to get a speaker cable now 🙂
Man, that is a nice unit! Looks exactly like a Mini MASS with a Load Dump sticker on it. And you paid only $100? Damn! I got my Dr. Z Airbrake for cheap ($150), but it sells for over $300 new.
But the Weber being only $100 is a steal!
thdelectronics.com
thd makes both Hot Plate power attenuators, as well as amps with attenuators built in. they sound awesome.
I always enjoy reading your blogs, and you’ve mentioned my amps a few times so I thought I might chime in. Even though I’m an amp builder (part time… still got the day job) I use a Hot Rod Deluxe, like you, for the occasional gigs. It’s far from stock, I’ve modified it quite a bit over the past several years, including adding one of my variable reactance attenuators to the output circuit.
With the mods I’ve done, and the addition of the attenuator, it sounds really good and it’s the perfect little channel switcher to grab and go. I don’t need to take pedals with me anymore, although I will occasionally grab the Cry Baby (like Mad Stratter) depending on the set list.
Having the attenuator allows me to get the perfect amount of gain and output distortion while keeping my volume under control. The amp cleans up easily with a twist of the guitar’s volume knob. I’m obviously an advocate of attenuators, although I don’t recommend “diming” an amp into an attenuator. Not good for the amp or attenuator, in my opinion.
By the way, one correction: the Faustine amplifers with the built-in attenuators is the “Versa-Tone” line of tweed amps, not the Harlequin. Not sure who makes Harlequins, although the name sounds familiar.
Keep up the excellent writing… I’ll keep reading.
Regards,
Tim Gregoire
Faustine Amplifiers
Oops! Thanks for the correction, Tim! Damn! I even played the Versa-Tone over at Tone Merchants! I should know better! I run through so much gear, I lose track of who makes what sometimes! 🙂
Recently I found out I was going to be a father to my second child and being in the military it’s not like I’m swimming in money so I adjusted my lust for gear, shifting from wanting many guitars to tackle different tonal capabilities, to wanting to modify my existing guitars and severely limit the number of wanted guitars to four, five max. I decided I would wire the pickups using RCA jacks so I can easily swap out pickups, not entire guitars. The guitars I chose would have to last the rest of my life.
Compare to cutlery, this would be like wanting many different knives to wanting a couple of Swiss Army Knives.
After I decided what the guitars would be, I actually felt better about my decision and because I’m attacking it with such a MacGuyver philosophy I’m helping insure less frequent gas attacks because the gear I will have will get me close enough to whatever desired tone I want.
I feel that, as a guitarist, this is just about as practical as you can get and still maintain a great deal of tonal versatility. It would also mean that the guitars you pick you’ll get used to and know intimately.
-Pappy
Very well said! Never thought of the RCA jacks for swapping out pickups! That’s ingenious!
Thank you. I’d love to take total credit for it, but Gretsch did it in the 60s with what they called banana clips and I saw a member of the Gretsch Pages had wired his with RCA jacks. I just exaggerated and started the whole “collect pickups not guitars” idea.
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