UA Ox Box or Boss Tube Expander

daveyh

I’m looking for a solution to attenuate, and for recording, using at home (currently have a Tone King Iron Man 2 mini) What do people think is the best?

My current amps are a Marshall SV20h and a Magnatone Super 15, a fair  bit of crossover there so I’ll be selling the SV20. But I’m looking to future proof as much as possible. 

So simply, which is the best?

Revolutions

Haven’t used the Boss. Ox box just sounded great. Never felt the need to edit the cabs. Had my JCM 800 plugged into my pc speakers at all times, sounded awesome when tracking demos.

joeW

For recording I have found the OX to be an effortless and effective solution.  There are better attenuators and the Boss can reamp smaller amps, but I love the OX as a piece of kit I don’t have to worry about - it just works 

brucegill

One thing with the OX, you can’t turn the attenuator off. Great for recording. Not the best attenuating. 

daveyh

It would be used at home so not being able to turn the attenuator off on the Ox isn’t really a problem, but when you say it’s not the best at attenuating what do you mean?

I currently have a Tone King Iron Man mini which is great but obviously it’s an attenuator only so that’s my gram of reference. 

brucegill

Not tried the mini, but the full sized Iron Man was better at attenuation. As in, it felt nicer to play and sounded better, to my ears, than the OX. that said, Ox is still great and loads of people are happy with them, as was I for a long long time. Don’t need an attenuator now so got rid of the OX. 

maharg101

The Ox is a great piece of kit. The attenuation has five steps, from silent to not attenuated at all. Some people find the step between 3 and 4 too large. Others find the tone to be altered in some way on the lower settings. Personally I think it's fine. I don't expect speaker output at one-tenth of the power to be "the same but quieter". To me it sounds the same as using power scaling or a good master volume.

For recording and adding on the built-in effects, it's a joy. The cabs and mics are superbly engineered.

One tip - make sure to use balanced cables (I convert from the TRS outputs to XLR using a short converter cable) to avoid interference on the cables running to your audio interface. You can use ordinary TS cables, but do you do risk compromising the signal.

icu81b4

I use the Ox for di recording, plenty of options. You could combine with micing your own cab to enhance/thicken the sound even more. 

Great piece of kit.

brucegill

maharg101 said:

…The attenuation has five steps, from silent to not attenuated at all. …

99.9% sure that the lowest step STILL attenuates. No way of removing the attenuator from the circuit entirely.