Bugera POWER SOAK PS1 Passive 100 Watt Power Attenuator for Guitar and Bass Amplifiers with Emulated Mic Output

real talk, many individuals online will talk badly on attenuators as a whole. I gotta say, they are often wrong about how useful they are. There is a difference in gain staging when you have an attenuator in between your amp and cab. I cant stress it enough, it's not the same as a 'master' volume knob with a lot of amps.It is very dependent on your amp and setup though! do the research to learn how your amp works and where it derives most of its tone.Beyond that little ted talk, this attenuator is amazing. for the price it is easily the best on the market (that i've tried). its passive so it doesn't need continuous power, and is small enough to sit right behind my amp. It sounds great as it lets me drive my amp (silver tone Twin 12) at reasonable bedroom levels while getting the juiciest tone I've ever gotten.LTDR: This Attenuator is worth its weight in gold; if your setup is right for an attenuator

Allows me to play with amps and pedals again....works great l, love it

With all the smack that gets said about “passive” ie non-reactive load boxes I was plenty surprised to find out how well this cheapest of them all works! I’m as picky as can be and also own a Rivera rock crusher which I’d used on various old Marshall amps and currently on a Randall rd45 which doesn’t strictly need it but since I can bypass it with the flip of a switch I frequently prefer the slight taming of highs and excessive bottom end . Similarly I bought this one for an amp I hated and returned before this unit even arrived (Marshall dsl20h) and bought what turned out to be the amp of my dreams (Suhr PT15) which certainly goes not strictly need this either. The amp does have a wake up jump at very low settings of the master v however, below which it “goes to sleep” and sounding very dull and flat so for very,very low volume night time jamming this thing seems to act just like a perfect second master volume with no glaring loss of good tone beyond what your own hearing does at very low volume. My Suhr amp has enough bite and deep bass on reserve to easily compensate anyway. But I played loud too and even substantial attention still to my surprise doesn’t substantially crap up the amp tone. The only feature this unit lacks that it desperately needs is a bypass switch and the designers should really incorporate that and this thing for a fraction of the cost of anything else would rule the world. This unit attenuates even at full up which I do find odd. But In fact I’m now questioning just exactly how much of a reactive load said units actually provide ie what kind of impedance swing do they actually provide? And how similar is it to a real speaker? Not to mention how much of an impedance swing does a 16ohm guitar speaker present to a guitar amp anyway? I should also say blasting a 100+w amp full up into this is certainly a recipe for disappointment at best. I use it the way you should- setting the amp at the lowest volume that produces its best sound and dialing down from there. And granted I’m using a 15 watt amp although the biggest, fullest, loudest, crunchiest most expressive, most versatile one I’ve ever owned or played. And an amp that like most modern amps gets 90% of it’s tone from the preamp and does not rely on an overloaded power section. I’d say try this first and keep an open mind.

If you like to turn up your amplifier to get the great breakup sound and not blow out your windows, spouse, significant other or draw the wrath of your neighbors, you should have one of these. Totally passive so no power required.

12/14/23 update, Still love this thing. I have a hot rod deluxe, 40 watts. I have cranked the amp all the way up. I experience no heat problems even after hours. I’ve noticed a slight treble decrease but can compensate with the amp control. This thing emulates the growl you would get burying the volume on the amp. Caveat, you will not get full volume with the attenuator volume turned all the way up. If you end up needing it all you will have to disconnect it. There is no bypass.I had a cheap volume volumecontrol bridging the effects loop. It sounded ok but was lacking something. This is like the Boston group's Tom Scholtz power soak, It is the 6l6 power tubes that need to be pushed. This does that. I have a fender hot rod Benson model. It is 40 watts all tube. I push the volume on the amp to 8 and that drives the power tubes hot and gives that crunch with soak taking it down to where you can hear the pick on the strings. disclaimer here. I have nothing to do with the company or any distributor related this product I'm just an old man playing his guitar in his den that does not want the cops to be called. You must have one, 🧐You will likely require a male to female SPEAKER cable and a male to male cable. NOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENT CABLES. 🥵 instrument cables cannot handle the power and are like to fry something. Well, y’all know what I mean

I got a PRS MT15 used from an 80s metal player cheap because the amp was too “dark and brutal”. After nearly blowing my eardrums twice with the high gain microphonics and hair-trigger lead master volume I was ready to sell the amp after a week of troubleshooting and scouring fixes. As it turns out one YouTuber with 47 amp heads makes the claim that this is the noisiest amp head by far. I went all-out to salvage this amp because I really wanted to believe the hype and love it, and I was frustrated. So I bought a noise gate and this Bugera passive attenuator. The noise gate helped a bit with the noise, but the lead master volume was still a hair trigger that I had to tweak carefully every time I wanted to change tones, not fun. The Bugera attenuator on the other hand not only tamed the noise, it allowed me to play maxed out even at the higher power 15W setting for the amp (this amp is famously loud for this power rating) at bedroom practice volume! As a result I was able to finally get the full range of tones from the amp with no need for a noise gate. I genuinely love playing with the amp now and strongly recommend this pair.Note: turning the attenuator dial counter-clockwise is the way to make the amp quiet, this was counter-intuitive to me at first.