Practice amp too loud.

robgilmo

I have a little Vox Pathfinder 10, it's very loud, especially when on overdrive with the gain turned up. I can cope with it and get it to a respectable volume for late night playing which is when I get to practice. I'm not too fussed on using headphones.
The problem is I would like a Vox tube amp and let my daughter have the pathfinder because at the moment we share it and this is making it difficult to give her lessons.
So do I have Options?  Is there a way to tame a loud tube amp to keep the levels low enough so as not to wake the household for night time Playing? 

olafgarten

If the Pathfinder 10 is too loud you won't be able to get a tube amp quiet enough unless you get one with 0.5 watts or similar. 

ICBM

Turn the volume control down.

I know that sounds sarcastic. It's not - you just have to learn to move the control very finely. There will be a point where it goes from off to on, and you have to move the knob very slightly within that. Chicken-head knobs make it much easier because you can carefully push the tip of the pointer with your finger resting on the panel.

I've never found one amp, no matter how powerful, that can't be played quietly. If you can't get an overdriven sound you like with it like that, use a pedal as well - turn the gain down on the amp too and use the pedal with the gain up and the level down.

robgilmo

I'm reading about a thing called a Speaker soak, it a an attenuator and claimed to get an amp down to bedroom levels, are these type of things any good? 
The pathfinder 10 is louder than I'd like but for late night playing I can get it down , master volume set right down to the brink of no volume at all, gain up to where I want it then the guitar volume down a little, not ideal but doable. 

robgilmo

ICBM said:

Turn the volume control down.

I know that sounds sarcastic. It's not - you just have to learn to move the control very finely. There will be a point where it goes from off to on, and you have to move the knob very slightly within that. Chicken-head knobs make it much easier because you can carefully push the tip of the pointer with your finger resting on the panel.

I've never found one amp, no matter how powerful, that can't be played quietly. If you can't get an overdriven sound you like with it like that, use a pedal as well - turn the gain down on the amp too and use the pedal with the gain up and the level down.

Never thought of using a pedal, that makes perfect sense, on the clean channel the volume is much more managable. 

ICBM

Yes, for a valve amp you can use an attenuator. They're not usually recommended with solid-state amps, but as long as you're not driving the amp hard - and you won't be - then it will work too, although obviously you need some way of plugging it in between the amp and the speaker. At the cheapest, a simple 'L-pad' type will handle 10W. If you're not technically-minded it wouldn't cost a lot to have someone mount one in a box for you.

57Deluxe

lay a blanket over it and turn it towards the wall...

Alnico

If you look around you will probably find a zoom G3 (original model without the exp pedal) used for around £60-70 and another used Pathfinder 10 for around £30.

Leave the Vox on clean and plug the G3 into your laptop and play around with nineteen million different drive sounds, amps and all the other effects you could ever want. Save them onto patches and then every time you play you know you've got however many sounds pre programmed that will work, just ride the volume on the amp as much as you dare.

Plus it's a recording DAW interface

Plus you get to be the Cool Dad and have the same amp as your Daughter - these things matter !

You only spent a fraction of what a valve amp will cost and you and the people around you are happy.

Or buy a JCM800 and tell them all to get on with it !
Even then you could still run that on low and have a glorious sound with a pedal.

I use a Deville with pedals at home in the living room and it doesn't cause a problem.

AndyJP

You could try a parallel compressor to simulate amp compression.  Something with a blend control that you set low.
I get decent results at home with my 40 watt amp and a compressor.

ecc83

Do NOT cover the amp with a blanket! Paradoxically enough a Sstate amp is more likely to fail due to lack of ventilation than a valve jobby.

Dave.