[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey everyone, welcome to That Pedal Show. Dan here. Mick here. Hello. Welcome to the show. Please subscribe. Yes. And please go to that pedalshowtore.com and pick up some merch. It is the main way we fund the show. This is the second video in a kind of part one and two that we're doing about modern attenuators. The wonder of modern attenuators. Nonetheless, the first one, the wonder of modern attenuators quieter. We sort of talked around some of the issues. The obvious thing about using a an attenuator on your amplifier. Your amp's too loud. You need it quieter. Use an attenuator to make it less loud, but retain much of what makes the amp special to you. Yeah. Which is a very different um deal than simply turning the master volume down. And we've done shows on that, too. Links below. We're turning the table upside down here. Yes. And this is called the wonder of uh modern attenuators. Louder. How does that work? What have you just heard? You've heard the I'm going to say this wrong. Bugger. That's right. Bugger. Is it buggera? Yeah. Right. Right. We prefer bugar. Right. In its one watt mode. Yeah. It's an Infinium teeny tiny little amplifier. It's an Infinium T5. It's an all valve amplifier. Mhm. It has uh a maximum of 5 watts and a minimum of 0.1 watts. And it's currently in its 1 watt mode. And as you heard Dan playing at the beginning there and if you wish to view it again and look at the dB meter, you'll see it barely went over 80 dB. So, it's very quiet. I.e. It is the kind of volume you would be playing at home if you live in any sort of normal home where playing at volume is not possible. Yeah. And this is the simplest approach approach. This is the simplest approach to playing at home. Before we get into IRS, before we get into software, before we get into digital modeling amps, this is just a one watt tube amp. Yep. One watt tube amp into a guitar speaker. And it's it's uh it's genuinely a pleasure to play. It sounds pretty decent. And we've got some pedals up front here. So, you know, uh a couple of boosty overdrivey things, a wobbly thing, a delay, and a reverb. The the kind of pedals that I don't want to say most people because there's no such thing, but many people have on their board. This is not an unfamiliar situation for a lot of people. So the standard uh way to use an attenuator as we said big amp 100 watt Marshall if you watch the last uh video in this series make it quieter. What a lot of modern attenuators have is functions to not only make quieter but make louder. Correct. So if you've got a small amp that you like might not be a onewatt buggera it might be a six watt champ. Yeah. might even be a deluxe, you know, where you turn it up. Uh, that's a Fender Tweed Deluxe where you turn it up to a point and it it just overdrives too much and you can't get it any louder and you might want to get it a bit louder if you want to take your little amp and go and do a gig. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. So, um, what what's our first stop then? First stop is our beloved Fry Power Station. So, this is still an attenuator. But we can still plug the amp in from the speaker output. It takes all the loveliness, creates a sound, but it goes through a 50 W valve power amp, which means that we are taking that signal, we can still turn it down, but we can also, most importantly, turn it up. Yeah. Uh, and it's a reactive load attenuator. It's not just like an old school resistive straight. The modern attenuators are a reactive load. That's right. That's right. And but it also has some really nice things on like deep functions and you can change the like this presence and it's really really cool. So what's interesting especially if we're regardless of whether we're taking that sound and making it louder or smaller the way our ears perceive things we have this Fletcher Monson curve so that you can shape the output of it to sort of normalize what's going on at at changing volumes. It's really clever. Okay, we'll do a finger snap. I'll play a little bit um just to give you an idea of one watt. Uh and then we'll do a finger click and you'll then hear it. At the moment, the fryet's not in the game at all. It's just the head plugged into the cab. Uh and the next thing you'll hear after this is with the fry in. Yeah. [Music] Back in the room. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] That's [Music] Isn't that good? It's great. It's really great. It's fantastic. And the what I love about that you've got the your depth presence apart from the volume and some switches to go between different bright brightnesses and uh resonance depths as well. But they're subtle. Yeah. You know, it's not like having a massive EQ thing in there. It just if you're going between a a closed back and open back cab, you can change how that bottom end just hits it a little bit because it's all important, right? the the uh the your high and low end response determines the sort of where the whole tone sits. Going to get you to have a play. Find my phone a minute. You you have a play. I'll manipulate a couple of those things so the good people can hear. Okay. And obviously what what hopefully doesn't require explaining. We went from the Bera's one watt, turn the power station on, and were able to increase the volume. That's the increase in volume you heard. Absolutely. And the db meter will tell the story when I do it again. Now [Music] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, [Music] hey. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] It feels really great. So, what Dan's got back now is all right, we've gone from below 80 dB where we started with the one watt infinium, we're now at 100 dB. We've added an incredible amount of volume, loud enough to gig with. But what you'll notice is that Dan has now got a whole bunch of dynamic available from the guitar, which wasn't there before. That's right. Okay. So, the next issueette we get to with small amps cranked, especially um any if you think like a small tweed Fender that doesn't have an effects loop, if you take something like um I don't know a tiny Marshall, one watt Marshall, this bigger. I'm going to get an overdriven sound out of it a minute. We'll turn all this guff off. Um we're going to make it We're going to make the amp overdrive. And then obviously we're going to feed in delay and reverb into the front which we did in the last show as well just to make the point very quickly that it can be a messy old mess. Okay. So I'll turn the power station off again. I'm going have to go back over here and turn the mic preamps up again. Turn the mic preamps up again because with these massive differences like 80 dB to 100 dB. Yeah. All right. It's measured here so it might not be completely accurate but is at least a constant. The difference in mic sensitivity you need is huge. So, we'll go back to just the buggera and we're going to crank it up and get an overdriven sound out of it. [Music] That's it. absolutely dimed in in one watt mode. Okay, so one watt this is I mean that might even be a bit high for for bedroom level. I don't think I probably wouldn't get away with that in my house, right? What's it saying? Still not not quite quiet. No. No. But you you certainly wouldn't be heard against Yes. So if we add some reverb to that now, you'll hear that it might might just get a little bit messy. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Not going to change any of the pedal settings at all. Right. M what we are going to do is use the loop in the fry power station to put the effects post gain after the amp. I'll just invoke the power station the power station now. Okay. And then we'll get all of what we just got but louder. Right. Okay. Yeah. Uh right. Mic preamps again. Go for it. [Music] It's really It's a great sound and it's a sound you could definitely use, but it's not perhaps, shall we say, the uh everyday use of delay and reverb with an overdriven sound. Indeed. So, we're just going to do a bit of reabling. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Sounds great. It's It really does. That really, really sounds great. And are we surprised? We've got a one watt tube amp cooking really nicely. And we're sticking it into a 50 W tube power section. Mhm. With the speaker. Exactly. With the wet effects post gain stage. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. The diagram on screen will explain what's going on. But that is really that's the best sound we've heard today by a country mile. Well, maybe apart from the unattenuated Marshall right at the beginning of video one, but I love that it's much more usable completely. But it it's important to say that if that was a loud amp, we could take that loud sound, crunchy as you like, and turn it down. Still do the same thing with those in the effects. Yeah. Make it make it smaller. But that is a wonderful thing about the modern attenuators with some of you know that being a really high quality valve power amp. So, you know, it gives you that option and some excellent tweakability in terms of the EQ working really great. Just to prove it before we switch out the machine um and and get a bit more adventurous, I'll put it in its 5W mode and we'll we'll turn it down just to prove that it will attenuate down as well as Okay. So, we'll just uh I'll flick the bugger at a um at the moment the the power station is off. We'll go from we'll go we'll go from one watt to 5 watts. Go down. [Music] [Music] Heat up [Music] here. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Finally, finally to make the point. So that was uh you heard the power station on dropping the level. We turned the power station off and the five watts of the beer came back. Let's now we'll find out where this thing can do its cleanest sound. Yes. At the five watt setting. Yeah. Nice. Like it. Go for it. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Have you mixed these out? No, the power station's not on. Ah, okay. There you go. So, that's just the amp. Yeah. Bypass. A clean sound. Yeah. There's a that. So, there's a switch on the front that just completely takes it out. Yeah. Okay. Got it. [Music] That's it. Five watts, right? Isn't that's clean? That's clean. Well, it doesn't get much cleaner than that. Yeah. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] That sounds fantastic. You can see why these things are so popular. So that no matter what amp you're using, that just gives it so much more flexibility, but without without really compromising anything. Didn't didn't feel like it was compromising anything to me. In fact, quite the opposite. So you've you know, let's say you've got a 5 watt amp and you're thinking, "Oh, I need a 20 or a 30 or a 50 because I want to go out and play." That is an absolutely viable option as long as your speaker is powerful enough to take 50 watts. Yeah, but that and another cab. Yeah, cuz there are two there's two speaker outputs on that, right? So, you could have, you know, two cabs running together. Magic. Okay, let's take that basic principle and get silly. Well, add some functionality, but also well, we'll see. Let's Okay, back in the room. Uh, goodbye Frey. Hello. Two notes. Torpedo Reload 2. Yeah. And have you not putting little wooden things on the edge of all the really posh ones these days? Yes. This is very nice. You can put rack ears on there as well if you want if you want it in a rack. Anyway, desktop use. Right. What's interesting about this? So, this is a it's a solid state but a stereo version of uh Yeah. If you just just turn all the way down for the There you go. So, it's a solid state version, but it's stereo. It's like 215 watts aside. Uh, it's a class D power, but it's using all the two notes cleverness, but it's all analog, right? It's all analog. So, same thing. You take your one watt amplifier, you plug that into the device. Y that gives you instead of the fry which had one amp, it's now got two amps stereo or dual mono, whatever. You've got a stereo effects loop which you can configure in a bunch of different ways. It's very clever. You can do parallel and you know into each other. You can also, it's got XLRs on it that you can feed into an external IR device and it comes packaged with Celestian software and blah blah blah, but that's not for this unit. That's for something else. This unit 100% analog. Yeah. So, the the way that would work is well, we'll hear it in a second, but then you take your DIS, you send them to your recording interface or front of house or wherever you want to send them, and you apply the speaker IR after. So there's no IRS in it, correct? And in that sense, for me, it falls down compared to the Palmer one that we tried. Yeah. So the Palm one's really interesting because it's all all analog. Yeah. Uh speaker uh curve things. But I think what this is meant for is if you send this if you're recording or whatever, you're doing a gig and you send that to a couple of tracks that you record, you it is a DI, but you can reamp it later. Yeah, if you know it doesn't quite nail it, you can take a really pure signal recorded from that and then go to town with it with all the other two note stuff. So, we are recording the DI from the uh XLR outputs as well and if I can find it within my soul to add some uh IRS to them, I will. And give you an idea of what happens when you add IRS to a direct signal. [Music] As it stands, we've got the Buggera in one watt mode. The what? The bugger. Thank you. In one watt mode. And it's hitting uh it's going into the reload. You can only put one amp into it. Even though it's got two power amps and a stereo effects loop, you can only feed it with one amp. Buggera, which you've heard in the video already. And then from the uh those two big white dials on the front, uh they're feeding each of those cabinets with its own 215 watts per side. I know you've said that already, but I'm going to repeat it anyway. That's good. So, here's the bugger at one watt. [Music] Hey. [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] And because we have a stereo effects loop, we can add some stereo effects to make Dan feel less hateful about what's currently happening. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] [Applause] I tell you what's really interesting. And I know that's a solid state power amp and it's quick, but I am getting that little bit of valve compression on the front from the amp. From the amp. Keep playing. That's really cool. Check we're not killing the preamps. Okay. [Music] Going to turn it up to maximum. Okay. [Music] [Applause] [Music] That is not 415 watts. So something weird is happening. No, because we the the the bugger is turned down. I know. But even so, that's maximum. There's got to be a level control on it somewhere. If you turn up the output master volume bugger, [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, what we've got now is the amp turned down quite a bit, right? and the um reload turned up quite a bit. I'm going to reverse that. I'm I'm going to max the amp out. Remember, it's still in this one watt setting. Yes. And uh we'll turn the reload down a bit to hear it attenuation. Y [Music] [Music] [Music] And we're hitting 94 95 there. Yeah. So, let's get down to 80. Okay. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] That's just using the overdrive in the Buggera at one watt. I dig it very So what's interesting there's there's a clarity in the power amp. it. You feel the quickness, but you absolutely feel the compression in the amp, right? So, it's just making it have a play, man, because it does feel really nice. Yeah, I will. I will. This episode, the first episode was called make quieter, which is what we've just done. This episode is called make louder. Yeah. So, I'm going to get the Bera in the one watt mode happening. Happening, which it is, and then we're going to make it louder. Let's do that. Okay. Yep. That would make me happy. Uh because we we're down sort of towards 80dB which is we're taking nominally as home volume level. Sure. Sure. [Music] Sure. Sure. Right. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] I'm super impressed. So, feels great. Yeah. So, we went from a distorted sound. Remember, there's no overdrive device here at all. You would never ever ever get that range of clean and distorted out of a one watt amp. I put it on five watts at the end to get more headroom. Right. So, what I'm interested now in now is we know that it'll do the distorted thing made louder or quieter. Can it do clean dynamics? Yeah. So, I'm going to turn it up a bit more, but I'm going to play more lightly um and add some some wet effects. Go for a crazy reverb. See how it handles that. And quite a lot of delay. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Okay. So, so it's a sighting lap. We don't really know what's going to happen. Yeah. That solid state power section is delivering that bottom end in the way that solid state power sections do. Yes. Absolutely no give. Yeah. No pleasure. just here have this. So, I'm just going to take some of the bottom the depth out of it a bit. It's one of the things I find about solid state is it delivers the frequencies in a totally different way or class D or whatever it is. Not tubes is what I mean. [Music] Yeah, it's academic at this point because what the reload is delivering is headroom that you would simply never ever ever get out of a one or five watt completely. So, what I dig about it though is that even in an amp as simple as the Buggera, there's enough variation in sag and compression and limiting and that that is just saying, okay, I'm just going to deliver this Yeah. as like as like perfectly as I possibly can. Yeah. And so, you can get really tweaky on what's going on with the app. Yeah. And so so for some of the the stuff I was doing before and the detail and the distortion. Yeah. Yeah. The sound the sounds you were getting were fantastic. Me I it's not I couldn't find a place that I was happy. Sure. But with the distortion it was really killing it. Really interesting. And some of the transients on the clean stuff you were playing and I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Okay. Uh there's probably other stuff that we haven't talked about with the Reload 2. U not least that it comes with a great big software package and all of that. um massive package, but similar to the fry that we played earlier, the idea that you can use whatever amp you like with it, drive a cabinet and affect the sound of that cabinet. And here you can to an extent. Yeah. But not as much as you can with the Freyet. No. Right. 200 uh solid state watts is very different than 50 valve watts. I meant in terms of the EQ and the tone. Yeah, you've got depth and presence. Yeah, but the the Fiat's got some some extra switchiness. There's a whole bunch of stuff on the back as well. Yeah. Um what's nice is what we're not dealing with is any latency. So, because there's no modeling going on, because there's no digital signal processing going on, there's no latency. And that is a big deal when you're starting to do things like dual signal paths, adding effects, sending to other sources. Now, of course, as soon as you add an IR, you've got latency, but that's for out front or the recording software to worry about where you can fix it. Right on Q, we had to have these turned on because we used them in show one and it's passing the signal from the direct out even though they weren't turned on in the room. Yeah. All right. So when we started this journey Mhm. we started with the wonder of modern attenuators make quieter. Yes. And we've ended up in episode two as the wonder of modern attenuators make louder as the way only we can. It's a leading question. Yeah. Do you prefer getting a big amp and making it quieter or a small amp that's already quiet and making it louder? Small app. Me too. Every day of the week. Every day of the week. Every day of the week. The more I hear attenuators on 100 watt amps. And I appreciate you could if you watch episode one. And I appreciate you could take more time. You could endlessly tweak. You could keep going. I think it's infinitely more satisfying to take a small amp and make bigger. Remembering that you can make smaller as well. Yeah. Yeah, as we proved with both of these. Yeah, I I don't the attenuation thing the the reason that I would use the those attenuators to make a a large amp quieter would be to take a signal and plug it into a recording device or you know whatever that is with the or make 170 dB 101. Yeah. But not 70. Yeah. Yeah. it. I I I'm gonna say I think it's folly. I think it's folly trying to take a 100 watt amp and make it bedroom level. I think you're far better off having a much smaller amp. Yes. And then and attenuating it less for the bedroom level or for the home level, but making it louder if you want to with something like this, the fry. Yeah, I I am really impressed with that. And I I've got to say sonically for me the fry leaves everything else standing. Sure. Yeah. Because it's tube power section. Yeah. And I'm not just being you listen back to the audio. I'm not just being like motivated cognition about that. I think cuz I've played tube amps for 35 years of course I'm used to what that sounds like. Yeah. Whenever we've used it, it's it's it's had that thing that we both instantly go, "Yeah, this is lovely." I will say I'm super impressed with this. If you're getting a lot of your sound from well, not just the amp, you know, like the the the preamp section of the amp and if you can if you're doing like the Dumble thing where the back end is just wide open, you're not fully reliant on that, then I think this is a really great solution. And also being the stereo. Yeah. Having the two cabs is is killer. Yeah. So that thing is you can have, you know, you can do your five watt world, have all the five watt amps in the world and then do, you know, get lost in big soundscapes and stuff. It's it's really fun. Yeah, we were using it stereo today, right? Don't you could use it dual mono with two completely different uh No, you can't. You can only plug one amp into it. You can only plug one amp into it, but you can you can two cabs. You can have two cabs and you can have separate effects that return. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So, no, it doesn't do that. Doesn't do that. Yeah. Cool. Um, so we've we've we tried four devices. The Boss Yep. From the start of episode one, we tried the Boss Waza Core. We tried the uh Palmer Super. We tried the Fry Power Station, the single one rather than the 100. And we've tried the two notes reload two. Mhm. What are you going to choose? Try it. They're just I would choose two fryets for a make louder device. For a make louder device. Yeah, without question. Yeah, I would. But I I would choose two of them. I But it's a honestly I could use that. I yeah because of the I love the transients and all that sort of stuff really works for me but the stereo nature of that I thought I think it's really cool also that thing if you're so I would never do this but if you are reamping uh you know you've taken your fil sound or your Princeton or whatever that's a sound you like but you want to make it bigger you want to be able to send uh two signals to record so that you can reamp it later whatever that I really dig it. Yeah, I really dig it. And it might be that you find uh speakers that you like better in, you know, certain situations, whatever. But I Yeah, we haven't impressed. Hasn't even got into the IR side once you send the direct outs. So, that's one thing for the Boss. Boss is like a an it's the I think it's the cheapest of the lot. Yeah, it's an all and like it's got the IRS built in. You can plug a, you know, 200 watt amp into it or whatever you, you know, it does a lot of stuff as an allin-one. As an allin-one, I think it's really impressive. It does, it does half a job of the making louder because it's got that 30 watt 30 thing. This not loud loud. The Super Soaker as an attenuator. That would be my choice. Incredible. As an attenuator cuz the other thing the Super Soaker and the Boss have is headphone outs. Yeah. Neither the Fry nor that have a headphone out. So if you want a pure attenuator to use at home and you want to hear that sound, you know, complete with things like using the effects loop. So you get all your stereo effects in the Palmer but not in the Boss, you get mono effects in the Boss as well. Although the you got stereo effects that you can get into with your software. Yes. And so it is all in there. And I think as a as something that is a is a way into that you can you can just take that and and have loads of fun at home with your headphones and it's all there. It's I think that's really cool. I think I genuinely think they all have really good things about them depending on how you're going to use them. Yeah. You know, you you and I would take a a Tweed Deluxe and use the fry every day of the week. Every day of the week. I would it to me it opens the world of small amps which I've never really loved because they're just not loud enough in a band situation. There you go. The Friette especially fixes that completely. And I know there's loads of you out there doing it. But just try and bear in mind for a second there's loads of people that have no idea that that's even possible. Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely I think what doing these two shows has done is it's turned on its head my expectation of an attenuator. I still don't want to hear a 100 watt amp with an attenuator. I think it's a waste of time. It's not it's not you can spend weeks getting it to a point where you're happy with it. Yeah. Just get a small amp and crank it up and mic it sensitively. I think it's a better result personally. But if you want to knock a few dB off and send a thing to the front of the house, different game. Different game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Attenuate it slightly, of course. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. Very cool. I'm sure this will be a hot topic in the comments. So, let us know what you think. Let us know what you use. Let us know um how you get around this whole thing. I Yeah, man. One watt buggera power station, couple of cabs. Happy days. I'm happy. Unreal. I'm totally happy. Okay, good. Please subscribe. Click the button. Yes. And and also please go to thatpedshowstore.com and grab some merch. It is the main way we fund the show. Uh and a massive thank you to all of our patronons on Patreon. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you very much. I'm going to bottle the uh perspiration that's come off today. Oh yeah, let's get that online. We'll sell that on the store. Yeah, very lovely. Minus money. Um and there was something else. Uh retailers. Retailers. Thank you to our preferred retailers. Details in the description below. God bless them. Okay, we'll see you soon. Brilliant. Bye bye.