Author Topic: 300T power attenuator question  (Read 2053 times)

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Offline marketing4yourdemographic

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300T power attenuator question
« on: February 26, 2007, 09:01:12 am »
the 300t is my favorite bass amp because it's so damn versitle and every tone it has is perfect, i also like it a whole lot as a guitar amp mainly due the the extremely fat sound..it'd be my favorite guitar amp if it were a little more gainy so the distortion would sustain longer and i imagine it'd do that if i were able to crank it and saturate the tubes but you'd have to take it out to the desert to crank it all the way, my friend has an ampeg vl 1002 which is a tube guitar amp with a built in power attenuator but i dont know if the attenuator sucks or if they're all like that but it took a lot away from the tone which was pretty shitty, so do you guys know if a power attenuator would sound good with a 300t and if so which one? or does it even matter?

Offline EdBass

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Re: 300T power attenuator question
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2007, 04:04:45 pm »
Attenuators definitely "color" (to use nice language) the sound of an amp, I'm not a big fan of them.
Also, that 300T has a whole bunch of energy to try to absorb, if you find an attenuator that will handle it you could probably also grill hamburgers on it.
Have you thought of using a Variac? You could probably get the effect you are looking for that way.

Reeves Amplification (www.reevesamps.com) uses power scaling licenced from London Power, quite slick and it's built in to the chassis.
I'm very familiar with Reeves gear, top notch quality and the power scaling does what they say it does; takes a 50 watt amp down to 1/2 watt, but with full power tube saturation, unlike a master volume that only saturates the preamp tube(s).
Pretty amazing technology but I don't think it will handle 300 watts.
So much for the endorsement...

I'd go with the Variac.

Offline Isaac

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Re: 300T power attenuator question
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2007, 05:20:46 pm »
I used to use a Scholtz Power Soak on my Sunn amp. I never noticed any colorization. My conclusion is that it must be slight, and not enough to matter in a band situation.

It's only good to 100watts, though, so it's not a solution for the 300T.

Have you considered pulling half of the power tubes?
Isaac