Methods of Attenuating your amp

[J.custom]

Hey guys, recently I've been thinking about ways to attenuate your amp without using an attenuator. I've discovered one of them by chance, when I plugged in a cable to the send section of the efx loop, but didn't plug another cable into the return, had a drastic vol drop, but still unsure whether it would damage the amp or not. Another method I've seen people use is to put a volume pedal in the efx loop.

Do you guys have any other methods?

 

[relinquish69]

Volume pedal would be my approach. However, some amps have to be played loud to sound good.

 

[carboxymoron]

Putting a dummy cable in a parallel efx send is the same as putting a volume pedal set to 0. No reason it would damage anything. It should more or less cut the output in half (or variable if you have a blend / return lvl knob).

 

[J.custom]

Cool. Just to double check, the efx loop bypasses the preamp and goes straight into the power amp so your modulation pedals don't get affected by the tone stack? Correct me if I'm wrong, quite interested to know how it works.

 

[carboxymoron]

Best to search for your specific amp schematics?

 

[tyzjames]

I think the effects loop lets you insert your effects after the preamp section but before the power amp. Putting a volume pedal in the loop (should be a low impedance pedal) would be the same as putting a volume pedal at the end of your rig but playing through a clean channel. Correct me if I'm wrong!:S

 

[shredofaster]

Cool. Just to double check, the efx loop bypasses the preamp and goes straight into the power amp so your modulation pedals don't get affected by the tone stack? Correct me if I'm wrong, quite interested to know how it works.

Yep.

I dunno about you, but i find that using an eq pedal in the effects loop can sort of act as an attenuator too. I run my fish n chips eq in my ht5 effects loop and i can actually run the amps volume slighter higher by reducing the level setting on the eq pedal. But from experience i can only do that through certain amps, i tried it through a peavey 5150 and it was still very loud lol.

 

[wck]

James: Thats the idea.. Lowering volume but not gain.

 

[lazy3yed]

Cool. Just to double check, the efx loop bypasses the preamp and goes straight into the power amp so your modulation pedals don't get affected by the tone stack? Correct me if I'm wrong, quite interested to know how it works.

Nope, not really. It's actually more to do with the order of effects than the tone stack. Modulate the distortion or distort the modulation. Simple as that.

The real reason to bypass the preamp is if you're running a "preamp" pedal and don't want the amp's preamp coloring the pedal's tone. So, one would plug the pedal's output into the amp's loop return, skipping the amp's preamp.

I run my fx loop thru a buffered effects loop (Ceriatone Kleinulator) and it acts like an additional master volume (adjustable send and return levels). It's definitely more effective than the traditional attenuator between amp and speaker.

 

[theunknown]

shit i shouldnt have sold my vol pedal. i'll see if jcustom's idea works. heheh. 0.75w still too loud hahaha.

 

[MadWerewolfBoy]

correct me if i'm wrong. going by the little that i know and by a bit of logic, if you lower your preamp's signal, the power tubes would still not be pushed hard enough to hit saturation. i think these methods mentioned only give's a false sense of "attenuation". in effect, it's just lowering your volume, just so you can up the master volume. not too sure if a very high gain stage amplifying a low signal would get your the same result.

what the classic attenuator does is very different; the power amp is getting driven by a huge signal and then this overall volume is lowered by the attenuator.

 

[lazy3yed]

Yup, I agree. This method is only good when the desired tone is generated mostly in the preamp section. For power tube saturation, the power tubes need to be pushed, so the output control has to be after the power section.