A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

I bought me a cheap Harley Benton PA-100 "power brake" for my Plexi. It's so cheap I figured I'd give it a try so see how it works.

And it does work. I haven't had problems getting a good band volume with the Plexi in 50w, two tubes only, and a 2x12", in the middle of the room my cell phone dB meter says about 85dB.

BUT the Plexi, even if it does have a master volume, is a fickle amp for the whole gain chain. If you change the master volume, the sound changes rather drastically. If you turn it up much, forget about getting a clean sound outta it. Change gain, you need to change also the master volume.

In reality, I've had to heavily change the volume going IN the amp, to create suitable sounds from rather clean to lead drive. Always a compromise with a 1-channel amp, and as a result I've had to send a rather quiet signal into the amp and add some drive from my GT-8 in front, to create enough variation.

Now, what this brake does, is I can dial in a sound where I can freely set the gain and master volume just right, so that it's rather spanky clean with light playing and neck pup, and goes into slight, tight crunch when hit harder, but there is still headroom left for lead boost.

And of course, set like that, it does become too loud.

Well, a brake like this easily knocks out the excess dBs and gives me proper volume control with one big and easy knob without changing the sound at all.

Now it's possible to have the master over halfway, and proper hot signal into the amp and still have a nice spanky RHCP clean and very little need for OD boost even for heavy sounds.

When I have the brake at halfway mark, it now gives the same dB as before,, but there's easily 20dB adjust range either way without change in volume, and I was able to take out lots of OD boost, EQ and noise gate, as with the gains correct all the way through the chain, it's also totally quiet with absolutely zero noise when no sound is going through.

Well worth the money (circa $80).

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Great review on that Deeaa. I think a lot of us are looking for something like this an effective cost efficient way to get our overpowered tubes down to workable levels.

I'm half looking into these too. Do you notice any effect on the tone under attenuation? Some folks say the less expensive L-Pad types 'suck tone' or 'kill your treble' or some such thing. Did you notice that at all? I'd assume the effect, if any, is more noticeable when using higher attenuation settings. Just curious.

aullucci wrote:I'm half looking into these too. Do you notice any effect on the tone under attenuation? Some folks say the less expensive L-Pad types 'suck tone' or 'kill your treble' or some such thing. Did you notice that at all? I'd assume the effect, if any, is more noticeable when using higher attenuation settings. Just curious.

There's a some dampening of tone, I think...but for the Plexi it's basically only a good thing, as it's rather raw sounding amp after all. Hard to say though, because now that I got the volume chain issues sorted I also changed the EQ quite a bit. It sounds the same it did before but needs less EQ correction now.

I only very briefly tried to quiet it down to whisper, and I can't say the tone changed much at all from the halway setting. Then again, as the amp master is only halway up, and it's 50w while this can handle 100, it never goes near clipping, for which there's a warning led.

I had a smaller L pad device after a 5w amp some years back, trying to make that bedroom volume, and I remember that changed the tone much more clearly.

Am also thinking I'll up the wattage back to 100. I don't think it will yield much more dB at all, but I think I might get a bit more detail and solidity for low end. As it is, especially for cleans and using neck pickup, the lowest notes get a little...garbly easily, breaking up in a way that's not that great. In my experience higher wattage usually improves low end clarity and punch. It's due for a tube change soon enough anyway, so I'll try it with all four.

Can always just pull the two if it becomes too loud, but I don't expect that to be an issue, especially with the brake behind it.

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Hey @deeaa , I didn't see this post of yours before... but I just jumped in this pond too!

I picked up this little Bugera attenuator for $99 CAD. This unit has direct out capabilities too, but I haven't tried it.... apparently it's not really very impressive.


I'm pretty new to all this tone chasing, and I've always heard how great things get when you can crank an amp and get those output tubes cooking. I decided I wanted to try to attenuate my Traynor YCS50 (with a master volume) cranked up and see what the fuss is all about.

First of all, it makes quite a noticeable difference and definitely has that thing that I'm looking for. Secondly, there is such a thing as too much. The sweet spot on this amp seems to be just past 3:00 on the channel and master volumes. I didn't notice much effect on tone that couldn't be cleaned up using on board eq. If I can find a little time, I'll put together some sound clips.

Curiously, I tried it on a friend's Marshall JVM205 into a 4x12, but the cranked power tubes didn't really make a huge difference in tone... it pretty much sounded the same, but quieter. It didn't have the added thick overtones and tightness that was imparted to my amp.

Auyh, that's how ttey work...not surprised it didn't change things in the JVM...the sound of those JVMs come pretty much only from the preamp, as is with many a modern or 'metal' amp. There is a benefit to that - you don't need an attenuator with a JVM, you can play it really quietly with good sound without one.

What I did with my JVM was I had a rather nice boost in the loop and I biased the power tubes on the hot side, and THEN I was able to get sounds like a proper old-school Marshall.

With my current Plexi the power soak is perfect. I haven't tried the DI out yet either but when I do, it will go to Mooer Radar from there, I think the DI out alone probably sounds pretty bad.

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Glad the power soak is working for you, And, I think you described it best that a soaked Plexi is a wonderful thing, but not the same as loud straight to the speaker (how I interpreted your statement about the soak dampens the sound). Part of that is because our ears prefer tones between 87dB and 105dB, according to some studies that I read in 'Sound on Sound'.