Brake Lite or ......

[beakos]

I'm thinking of building a Dr Z Brake Lite style of attenuator for my little Marshall.

Based on the info found here, it seems the Trainwreck AirBrake and Brake Lite are 'birds of a feather' with the difference being the AB has a reheostat for bedroom levels.

I was looking some other places and came up with a different schmatic that seems to be similar in concept to the AB / BL. I've attached the link below.

Two questions:

How close is the attached link to the AB / BL. Will this one sound the same as the AB / BL?

Second - From everything I've read, the AB / BL is designed for an 8 ohm amp output. What would I need to change to work properly with a 16 ohm amp. Or a 4 ohm?

Thanks!!

http://www.hearditontheweb.com/images/p ... nuator.pdf

[sabredude]

I have built the weber attenuator and it rocked! It was the first one that I built that I thought actually worked. I do have a hotplate that probably does a a better job but not for the price. Gerald is right when he says that attenuation down to -12dB is all you can do wihtout affecting tone. The rheostats just don't sound good to me.
I built the other one and thought it sounded terrible - I'm suspicous that I did something wrong though since the weber design is a fraction of the price and I had heard good review with the other. I used this on a marshall 50 w and got it to practice levels with the amp dimed using webers design.

[sabredude]

One caveat to this is that I've never used my Gerald attenuator for any great amount of time. Just long enough to demo some of my amps. I have no idea what it does to tube life! For that matter, my hotplate may eat tubes as well. Never gig'd with it.
I run a studio and usually the amps are cranked. I use the attenuators sparingly for demos and that's about it. It's hard for me to believe they are good for amps.
I'd love to hear some others weigh in on this as far as their experiences.

[leadfootdriver]

I was thinking about going with the AB too. But I hear the Larmar sounds better.

http://metroamp.com/wiki/index.php/Lar/Mar_PPI-MV

[RJ Guitars]

I have found that I get the best low volume sound with my own version of the Airbrake. I still prefer the tone of "loud" above all others, but attenuators are my own preference.

I didn't find a lot of tone difference between a master volume and a VVR, and I'm not especially pleased with either. They change the character of the amp so much that it doesn't work for me.

On this topic it's important to look at hings from a broad perspective though. If you want Trainwreck or Vintage Marshall tone that is different than a high overdrive style amps that was intended to use preamp overdrive to get it's tone. MV or VVR can work well for preamp overdrive amps but I prefer to only scale the output section... this can also be tricky business so there is no silver bullet. What I find is that if you get one amp that can do one thing extremely well and a few thins adequately you are probably ahead of the average.

YMMV - and it probably should!
rj