Amps with built in attenuators (Carr, Tone King, etc)?

[woodpile]

Anyone have experience with tube combo amps with built in attenuators? Been checking out the Carr / Mercury V and Skylarks along with Tone Kings / Falcon Grande and Imperial MKII. Thinking one of these could solve the volume limit PITA we run in to all the time. The Tone Kings and the Skylark are Fender voiced and the Mercury V more of a Marshall. All sound really good in videos but I've been hooked by that a million times.

These amps are a little pricey so would really need to work as advertised (cranked tone at low volumes). Any thoughts/experience, any other options? Would prefer to stick with tubes. I have a couple of good SS amps and just haven't found the sweet spot with them.

[Dave Scepter]

Cough, cough... SPLAWN !!

[RobB]

I’ve got a Reinhardt 18 combo for sale at Real Guitars in SF. It has power scaling on the gain channel. Like an attenuator, it lowers the voltage of the power section. A great feature that works very well. It also has a vintage/modern switch on the chassis which does a gain-stage thing from Plexi to JCM800. 

[veatch]

Egnater has them on their Rebel and (I think) tweaker amps. Chinese made, so much more affordable than what you listed, though the prices are a lot higher now than when I got mine.

On the rebel it goes from 1w to 20w. Works well enough. I leave it at noon to start to give me room to tweak volume at the gig without having to mess with the master volume, which is touchy on any MV amp I've used.

[Jakeboy]

Do you have any tube amps that you currently like? If so, buy a standalone attenuator. Badcat Unleash is awesome IMO and can retain good tone down below any reasonable  gig level rule.

[woodpile]

3 hours ago, Jakeboy said:

Do you have any tube amps that you currently like? If so, buy a standalone attenuator. Badcat Unleash is awesome IMO and can retain good tone down below any reasonable  gig level rule.

I do have a couple of heads and cabs I like to gig with when we can turn it up. I'm hoping to find a smaller/lighter combo that can work for just about anything. I've got a Dr Z Maz 18 and a Marshall DSL40 that could probably work with a separate attenuator. Will check in to that but have to admit that won't be as fun as looking for a new amp.

[gorch]

The Fender Princeton Recording comes to my mind. Very versatile great amp. I have had it for years. It was sold for a VAC 25. There are days where I regret having sold it since it is a fairly handy amp.

[JES1680]

I've been fortunate enough to own a Skylark and a Mercury V.

They are fantastic amps. The attenuators work well, but you really need to try for the volumes you are going for. 

For me the Skylark sounded great attenuated as well as at full vol. The Mercury V sounded pretty good attenuated, but really needed to be opened up to get the real Marshall goodness. Not that loud, but the difference between attenuated and not with both these amps is via  a switch and you just need to make sure the volume range works with one or the other settings. 

They are built like tanks and will outlast most of us mortals. 

I've had a few of Mark's (Tone King) amps and they are also really great, but more towards the Fender side of things. Falcon and Sky King were my favorites. Oh and the Royalist was probably the best JTM 45 style amp I've ever played, should never have sold that one. 

 

[woodpile]

18 hours ago, JES1680 said:

I've been fortunate enough to own a Skylark and a Mercury V.

They are fantastic amps. The attenuators work well, but you really need to try for the volumes you are going for. 

For me the Skylark sounded great attenuated as well as at full vol. The Mercury V sounded pretty good attenuated, but really needed to be opened up to get the real Marshall goodness. Not that loud, but the difference between attenuated and not with both these amps is via  a switch and you just need to make sure the volume range works with one or the other settings. 

They are built like tanks and will outlast most of us mortals. 

I've had a few of Mark's (Tone King) amps and they are also really great, but more towards the Fender side of things. Falcon and Sky King were my favorites. Oh and the Royalist was probably the best JTM 45 style amp I've ever played, should never have sold that one. 

 

Which Carr had the biggest range of tones (the most versatile)?

[JGale]

Frenzel doesn't have a real power scaling feature, the load dump is to power resistors, but it scales rather nicely to three levels. I have the 50Watt standalone amplifier.

Bonus: Everything is on sale over there.

[draelyc]

Suhr Badger 18 also has power scaling that works really pretty well, imo.

Mine’s a head, not a combo, but Suhr makes a combo version, too.

[RobB]

5 minutes ago, draelyc said:

Suhr Badger 18 also has power scaling that works really pretty well, imo.

Mine’s a head, not a combo, but Suhr makes a combo version, too.

Another winner. I had the head, too. Took a bit of dial experimentation to find the right balance, but ultimately I sold it. I like big bottle tubes for high-gain, though the 18 is a great amp in every respect.

[JES1680]

On 7/21/2022 at 5:03 PM, woodpile said:

Which Carr had the biggest range of tones (the most versatile)?

IMO, the Skylark had better cleans and really good dirt, but more tweedy than Marshally if I remember correctly, but they really are two different animals. Skylark is from the Fender side of the camp, and Mercury V all Marshall, so I guess it depends on which way you lean. If you like Fendery cleans then I'd go Skylark since you could use a pedal to get it more into Marshall territory. 

[draelyc]

14 hours ago, RobB said:

Another winner. I had the head, too. Took a bit of dial experimentation to find the right balance, but ultimately I sold it. I like big bottle tubes for high-gain, though the 18 is a great amp in every respect.

Yeah, I did have to experiment a lot to learn how to dial it in ~ there's a LOT of variety just with different combinations of the Drive and Power controls!  And I did quite a bit of tube rolling, too.  But once you kinda figure out what it does and how it does it, it gives up the goods.  

And I still have my 80 watt EL34 Shiva for going truly NVTS! \m/

 

[BillW]

For what it's worth, those new Marshall studio/legacy/vintage series come in low wattage with attenuation and the 20/5/1 watt versions in particular really sound good at lower volumes (if you're into that type of sound, of course)

[woodpile]

On 7/25/2022 at 1:59 PM, draelyc said:

Yeah, I did have to experiment a lot to learn how to dial it in ~ there's a LOT of variety just with different combinations of the Drive and Power controls!  And I did quite a bit of tube rolling, too.  But once you kinda figure out what it does and how it does it, it gives up the goods.  

And I still have my 80 watt EL34 Shiva for going truly NVTS! \m/

 

I found a great deal on a Suhr Badger 18 head with matching 1x12 cabinet. Haven't had a whole lot of time to dial it in but have figured it will absolutely do what I need it to. Has great base tones to work with and the scaling keeps those tones at lower volumes.......done. Was around half the price of a Carr so there's that too.

Thanks guys for the leads.

[veatch]

That's a great amp. You did good. 

[draelyc]

On 8/9/2022 at 6:51 PM, woodpile said:

I found a great deal on a Suhr Badger 18 head with matching 1x12 cabinet. Haven't had a whole lot of time to dial it in but have figured it will absolutely do what I need it to. Has great base tones to work with and the scaling keeps those tones at lower volumes.......done. Was around half the price of a Carr so there's that too.

Thanks guys for the leads.

Right on!  I just started my first band in 8 years, and the Badger + 1x12 rig is killing it so far.  Glad you found that it works for you, too!

[scottcald]

Just for info, I just saw Friedman's video for the new Steve Stevens v2.  Has channel volumes for 3 channels and a system volume.  They said it maintains channel balance etc.  Looks cool.