Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

My Marshall JCM 2000 1/2 stack sounds awesome turned up to about 7 or 8. Sounds awesome! No distortion pedal just straight into the amp. But, When i play at clubs, they always say. TURN IT DOWN. then I turn it down and it sounds like a solid state amp. I have heard you can remove some tubes which will convert a 100 watt head into a 50 Watt head. Anyone ever heard this? If true. It would be great to be able to turn up for the sound but not get the volume. We are a rock band and both guitarists use 100 watt Marshalls so we are pretty loud. any tips?

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Sorry dude, can't help you there. Nice pic though...lol

They used to make an attenuator called PowerSoak that would allow you to get the tone you need at a lower volume. Not sure if they're still made. Also, try playing with the gain and master volume on the amp, you should be able to reach a compromise. I have a TSL100 and I put the gain at 8 and never turn the master up past 5; I've got tons of tone and volume.

Yeah an attenuator is what you need as mentioned above. THD makes one and I also hear Weber Mass makes a pretty good one. The Weber Mass is all hand made and heard it's better than THD. Keep in mind, you will lose a little tone, but that's a small price to pay to get that sound at lower levels. I know what your talkin about when you say it sounds not as good at lower levels. I use to have a Marshall Plexi and DAMN did that thing sound good when I jumped the channels and turned it up to "Eleven." I never was able to find an attenuator at a good price and ended up selling it, which I still regret today.

First read all you can about using an attenuator for there are numerous configuration you can use to get great sound. Eddie Van Halen used to use an amp like my Marshall Plexi, but had the same issues as being too loud. So he used a Variac. The only differnce was he mismatched the ohms somewhere (and this is what I am not to sure about) in his setup. He either had 8 ohms coming from the amp into a 16 ohm variac and then into a 16 ohm cab. Was supposed to give him that ultimate "brown sound."

Anyways,

Good luck

Long time amp tech/builder-designer/electronics tech here.

OK, here's the deal. On a 4-tube output section, you can remove 2 tubes, but make SURE to remove one tube from each end, leaving the inside pair. (You *can* remove the inside pair, but the outside pair is usually easier to get to, as well as easier to remember.)

The idea here is that in a 4-tube output section, the pair on one side pushes the negative-going part of the signal, and the other pair pushes the positive-going part of the signal. You must leave one tube for each side, and not completely remove either the whole negative or positive side of the signal.

Next, you must remember that when you do this, you !!MUST!! multiply the ohms-rating of the speaker outputs on the amp by !!TWO!! In other words, the jack or selector position that says 4 ohms is now 8 ohms, and the 8 ohm output jack/selector position is now 16 ohms.

Keep in mind that you WILL be replacing power tubes a lot more often, as you'll be beating the crap out of them. If you run the 2 tubes for a while, you'll need to replace the whole matched quad, as you'll be burning the tubes left in the amp, while the ones you pulled will be unchanged, which means they are no longer matched! Don't be tempted to put the pulled pair back in if you've used the 2 tubes for any length of time! You *can*, however, replace the two tubes you've been using with the two from the quad that you pulled when the first two get weak.

Remember, always check and recheck everything before you fire it back up!

Good Luck!

Strat

You can take out two tubes, run at 50 watts--but that won't reduce the volume all that much. It may sound better at lower levels though. If you are going to do that, have a tech set it up right. All power-soaks are lousy, not an option if you really care. There are also different power tubes that will help. If you need to get that loud for the sweetspot, you must have some really clean sounding tubes.

This may sound crazy but I once took a cabinet cover and cut a hole out for one of the lower speakers and just miced it. If you have a leather jacket cover a couple of speakers with it and see if this helps. Another trick I used to use on my old Sunn amp is to turn the cabinet backwards. I still have an old power soak but it kills the tone of my amp. Some Marshalls u can route your signal thru the effects loop and use your effects level as an overall volume control.

Pulling the outer tubes will drop your volume around 3db, so if yor really cranking you wont hear a big difference.

I don't recall what it is called as it has been years since I last had one, but Peavey used to make a device that I used for just such a purpose. It was a box that you plugged your powered speaker outputs into and it then coverted that to a line level output that you could send straight to the mixer.

I used to use it on a Fender tube amp maxed out in a tiny rehearsal space to get the output tube grind I wanted and preserve tone and it did a kick ass job of it. It wasn't called a direct box, though there are some direct boxes out now that can do the same thing.

I would just run an external speaker output to the box and then to a line input on the mixer and it worked fine. The main speaker output continued powering the single speaker on the combo.

There are direct boxes that do this these days, however you still need a speaker load in many cases. What you can do is combine an attenuator and such a direct box. Run from your speaker out into a direct box that can handle speaker loads and has a speaker pass-though as well as a line level for the mixer output. Take the line level to the board as normal. The speaker pass-through is then run into your attenuator.

That way you get the lower volume through your cab on stage and the controllable volume at the board. Your tone may take a hit on stage, but you have the direct and unspoiled tone at the board. Just no speakers coloring your tone. What you could then do is mic your cab and even though the tone is not as sweet as it could be, go ahead and run that mic'd sound to the board and then blend it in at a reduced volume...say 35% and the direct at about 65%. This will give you some of that speaker coloration back and add the feel of moving air to your sound and you will still be able to control your volumes as needed.

It has the added benefit of not having to replace tubes as often or constantly put them in and take them out if you gig out and hit a small venue one night and a large one the next.

It's an imperfect solution but personally, I'd rather do that than mess with the tube issues, but that's just me. The perfect solution would be to have multiple amps so you could take a smaller one and get it maxed out at lower volumes. In some cases you will spend as much on a good DI that can handle speaker loads and an attenuator as you would a second amp. However, you have to lug that second amp around too.

(If you need a backup anyway, that's cool. If you already have two amps/heads and both are high wattage rigs, it might be smarter to go with the boxes and save having to worry about an extra amp which requires more maintenance than some little metal boxes and cables)

Anyway, it's just another thought.