Really liking my new "Ultimate Attenuator" with my

[geetarpicker]

Just a heads up. We've all heard about these units. I tried one last week and decided to order one for myself. I got the UA built one.
So far I've tried it on my Express clones and it really sounds great even at very low volumes.

I've owned 5 attenuators now over the years. The first an Altair made in '77 then a Scholz Power Soak in '81, then in recent years two THDs and an Airbrake. The Airbrake I always found to be too bright with my Trainwrecks, and I basically most of the time preferred the darker sounding THD. The Airbrake was handy for maybe a click or two of attenuation, but it was always bright and harsh to my ears. I even unhooked the cap in my Airbrake which helped a little but not much. At least the THD was a litte warmer. However the main issue with both of those is how fizzy and harsh in the high end when used more than a couple clicks back.

The UA attenuator has had some criticism for it load/reamp type design. It just is more circuitry which seems counter intuitive compared to the passive units. It has a 30ohm fixed resistor load, and a inductor in series with it. The inductor can be switched in or out for more brightness, though I currently hardwired mine out of the circuit. I may add my own switch later. I have tried a similar setup simulation by setting up a THD in load mode and running that to a power amp. That sounded really bad actually, not as good as THD simply run passively.

The UA attenuator works very well allowing the amp to distort the way it normally does though a cranked cab. The loading it gives the amp is an odd 30 ohms fixed resistance and that seems like an odd choice. Apparently they reached this value by the fact that it sounded the best and they were confident it was safe. It does sound good and judging by how the power tubes look the amp seems happy with the load. In some ways the other attenuators I've owned make the amps sound dirtier, almost like the loading is giving the amp something it doesn't like as much. That said I found the "clean to mean" potential very nice with the UA. With the amp cranked and the guitar rolled back the cleans were almost exactly as loud as when you would dime your guitar into total overdrive. The UA seems to allow the amp to behave this way more so than my other attenuators. It seems with the other attenuators I would loose clean headroom and not get as usable a clean tone.

Just a FYI.

The Ultimate Attenuator really stays smooth and is very linear tone wise all the way down to true bedroom levels. The amps stay fat but doesn't get overly compressed, and the highs are the smoothest I've heard in an attenuator.