so i got the traynor bassmaster (mkII) from my friend. it sounds incredible. unfortunately, it sounds incredible at way too loud of a level for my basement. or so my other guitar player tells me.

i'm looking for any advice folks might have on how to knock down the volume without fucking up the tone.

the cabinet i'm using is a mid/late 60's Kustom 2x12 cab with original jensens in it.

here's what i've got so far...

i unhooked the red lead from one of the drivers.

that made it quieter. i could crank the volume all the way up and it wasn't as murderously loud.

i'm told that there's really no good dummy-load type device, that they'll all fuck with the amp's performance in a bad way, except for the weber MASS with all the bells and whistles. that's what my gear guy tells me anyways.

so. other than the unhook-the-driver method, or the weber MASS, anybody have any other suggestions for how to get the tube saturation without the volume? any 12" drivers that sound great distorted but have really, really low sensitivity?

mucho thanky

ps - man, do i love to ps

pps - opinions on the super hard on? i'm liking the one i borrowed, but the cheapest i can find one right now is $130 and that's without an LED. it kinda seems like a lot to spend. but its effect is quite tits. anything else i can get cheaper that'll do the same (or very similar) thing?

one jensen down, one to go! so i'm thinking i should focus on finding two 12" drivers with really low sensitivity. cause the whole one-speaker thing probably lasted all of about 6 hours or so, and then it went bye-bye. i have no idea how many watts these things are even rated to handle.

anybody know of any rather inefficient 12" drivers that can handle at least 100w RMS?

toomanyhelicopters wrote:anybody know of any rather inefficient 12" drivers that can handle at least 100w RMS?

Try this wholesaler out of Colorado:

http://www.steelsound.com

They sell Madison speakers, 75 watters, 100 watters. They're not expensive, and they don't have great presence, but I've yet to blow one even with Ampegs really wound out. Ideally, you'd have two cabinets: the abuser cabinet for practice, and then the more musical cab for anything requiring your best sound.

BTW, their website is kind of wack ( good company service-wise, in my experience, though ). The best way to find their best deals is to jump to Ebay through their auction page, or just search for seller "www.steelsound.com" on Ebay. For instance, I just found some Madison 12" gtr speakers (2) for $50 in a Dutch auction there.

Good luck.

Are the two drivers wired in parallel? Yes? Wire them in series. It'll half the current draw from your amp, and reduce the voltage sensitivity of the cabinet by about 3dB.

Are the two drivers wired in parallel? Yes? Wire them in series. It'll half the current draw from your amp, and reduce the voltage sensitivity of the cabinet by about 3dB.

Series wiring will give you four times the impedance of parallel wiring, in a two speaker cabinet. Assuming the parallel wiring is providing you with the correct impedance match for your amp, the series wiring will be far off. You can do this if you want, but many tube amps don't like it.

Likewise, disconnecting one of the speakers in a parallel pair will double your impedance. Though it's closer to ideal, this mismatch can still be a problem, especially when pushing the amp. It sounds like this is what you've done already, since disconnecting a lead from a speaker in a series pair will yield no sound.

A single speaker with lower efficiency might be a good solution, if you can find one that will handle the power, and if you still like the sound through that one speaker. The only problem with this is that sometimes you might actually need more volume. If you foresee this happening, the attenuator with the 2x12 isn't such a bad idea, assuming you're still happy with the sound. The Weber MASS is one of the cheaper - if not the cheapest - out there.

-Tom

tell your guitar player to turn up!

Additionally, I've read a lot on other guitar sites about taking out one of the power tubes so that it runs at half power. Now, I'm not your man to explain it since I don't know your amp and haven't done it myself-- but you might want to browse http://www.fenderforum.com and/or http://www.guitargeek.com for additional ideas.

Actually, you don't want to remove one tube from a two power tube amp. These tubes are both needed for the amp to function properly, since they work as a push-pull pair in almost every case you'll encounter.

In a standard four power tube design, you can remove two of the tubes for a power reduction. In these amps, you basically have pairs of tubes performing the function of each single tube in the aforementioned example. You want to take one tube from each pair, which usually means removing the two outer tubes, or the two inner tubes. Inner tubes... right. Let me try that again. If the tubes are laid out in a row - 1,2,3,4 - then remove either 1 and 4, or 2 and 3.

When doing so, you should also double the impedance of your speaker load, as removing two power tubes doubles the impedance on the primary (tube) side of the output transformer. This works out nicely if you're using a parallel-wired 2x12 cabinet, since you can remove two tubes and match the impedance by disconnecting one speaker.

I'm beginning to feel like a small town impedance cop.

Back to toomanyhelicopters' situation: this isn't going to help you because your Bassmaster has only two power tubes, right?

-Tom

correct, only two power tubes here.

i was thinking about putting a switch into the cabinet, a kill switch that would let me switch one of the two speakers on or off on the fly. from what i've been told, the YBA-1A doesn't really give a shit about impedance if it's anywhere in the 4ohm to 16ohm range. so that's good.

i just won a couple old speakers off ebay this weekend (a '72 traynor, and an old Sunn) for $10 each. gonna mess around with combinations of those and the remaining jensen, see if i get anything good. i've also got a buddy willing to sell me some celestion 75's for $50 each, so i might go that route if it comes down to it.

how's about this one... i make a cabinet that has two 8" drivers in it, pointing directly at each other at a distance of like .5", and they're out of phase? that'll be a real load, real speakers, shouldn't fuck with the amp too bad... and it'll allow the power tubes to work their asses off without really adding to the noise.

shit, i dunno. somebody also told me to try sovtek power tubes, cause they're gonna be less powerful than the ones i've got (which are supposedly the ones that came with the amp 30 years ago).

i guess i'm just looking for a single magic bullet that maybe doesn't exist.

after looking at the Weber MASS, it just seems to have a pair of power resistors to absorb some of the power from the amp, and also an inductive load (the speaker motor)

it seems like a pretty good idea, and if you have the cash, i'd just buy one and not deal with the headache of building something.

but, if cash is tight or your just a DIY guy, you may want to try and put a big-ass resistor in series with the cab. you'll want to match the impedance of the cabinet. so, if your cab is an 8-ohm cabinet, get a big honkin 8-ohm power resistor from radioshack or something. the bigger wattage the better. i'd aim for 50W or bigger. if the gain drop is too big, try a 4 or 6 ohm resistor. if it gets too hot, get one with a higher power rating. (or, use a bunch of smaller ones. eight 1-ohm resistors in series = 8 ohms)

try and get a thermal adhesive or something and glue it some metal as a heatsink. this should cut the power going to the amp by 1/2, so you should be able to crank the gain of the amp and not blow out your eardrums.

let me know what you think.

good luck.
-mike