Attenuators with DI out?

preston61

So I have started recording more at home but most of the time I do that is when the kids are in bed and so I can't really mic up my tone king imperial.

So what I'm looking for is an attenuator that I can use to turn the amp down to pretty much silent and then DI straight into my DAW

I know that Tone King do the Iron Man, which was designed for the imperial, but are there any cheaper alternatives?

ThorpyFX

the swart night light has a line out

timmysoft

Jettenuator, I've got one and it's brilliant!

goldtop

THD Hotplate. some Weber MASS.

If you're doing cabinet emulation/IR stuff in your DAW, then you can use any dummy load and just MacGyver the line out with two wires and a jack socket. Add a level pot for higher amp amp outputs.

monquixote

I have a Sequis Motherload Elemental in the classifieds. 

You won't find anything better. 

hubobulous

Suhr Reactive load or Rivera Rockcrusher. I have both and the sound excellent.

digitalscream

I've got a RAT Amps dummy load which would be perfect for this. It's resistive rather than reactive, so it probably won't sound good enough for proper album-quality recording, but it's also incredibly cheap. Yours for £35 delivered.

p90fool

timmysoft said:

Jettenuator, I've got one and it's brilliant!

Me too.

SunDevil

I've been getting a lot of help from ICBM, ECC83 and others on another thread re this

You can make your own - you need a wire wound resistor to represent your speaker load (something like 24 ohms / to mimic a 16 ohm and 12 ohm To represent 8 ohm

Wattage will be dependent on the amp you want to use, but go large as the unused power is dissipated as heat

Tap an 82k resistor in series with 5k linear pot and an output jack, all in parallel to the wire wound resistor that provides the speaker load

ICBM

The 82K is not at all critical - in fact it's rather an odd value to pick, 100K is just as good and easier to get - likewise 10K for the pot. The values only affect the output voltage range, so could be usefully varied depending on the power of the amp too - the higher the power the larger the pad resistor value to give the same output voltage.

hywelg

THD Hotplate sounds shockingly bad though.....

pintspiller

i have a rat attenuator too. didn't sound too bad when i tried it to play along to mp3 on headphones

digitalscream

pintspiller said:

i have a rat attenuator too. didn't sound too bad when i tried it to play along to mp3 on headphones

Yeah...the problems become apparent when you try to do a proper mix with them, and the low-end has this fuzziness to it that just feels wrong for just about anything except punk. The Jettenuator does the same thing.

They're excellent value for silent practice, but not for real recording.

pintspiller

i like a punky sound, so i probably didn't notice. lol.

Van_Hayden

I'm highly impressed with the Torpedo Reload. It's very good and has a re-amp box included which is handy if you want to go back to your parts and reamp when making a noise isn't an issue. Some say it was a "major" influence on the Suhr reactive load. 

timmysoft

digitalscream;1071708" said:

pintspiller said:

i have a rat attenuator too. didn't sound too bad when i tried it to play along to mp3 on headphones





Yeah...the problems become apparent when you try to do a proper mix with them, and the low-end has this fuzziness to it that just feels wrong for just about anything except punk. The Jettenuator does the same thing.

They're excellent value for silent practice, but not for real recording.

I haven't had that with the jettenuator, the recording I've done with it so far has been good, I only got flubby low end at high gain when the line level was either under 2 or over 7, in the middle it was fine

FreddieVanHalen

Pete Thorn has a great video where he compares recordings with different loads and it really shows the impact of the better dynamic loads vs. the static loads.

I think it's this one, towards the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i770M9pM0_k

p90fool

timmysoft;1072365" said:

[quote="digitalscream;1071708"]pintspiller said:

i have a rat attenuator too. didn't sound too bad when i tried it to play along to mp3 on headphones





Yeah...the problems become apparent when you try to do a proper mix with them, and the low-end has this fuzziness to it that just feels wrong for just about anything except punk. The Jettenuator does the same thing.

They're excellent value for silent practice, but not for real recording.

I haven't had that with the jettenuator, the recording I've done with it so far has been good, I only got flubby low end at high gain when the line level was either under 2 or over 7, in the middle it was fine
[/quote]

Me neither, but I don't use much gain anyway.