Bugera POWER SOAK PS1 Passive 100 Watt Power Attenuator for Guitar and Bass Amplifiers with Emulated Mic Output

real talk, many individuals online will talk badly on attenuators as a whole. I gotta say, they are often wrong about how useful they are. There is a difference in gain staging when you have an attenuator in between your amp and cab. I cant stress it enough, it's not the same as a 'master' volume knob with a lot of amps. It is very dependent on your amp and setup though! do the research to learn how your amp works and where it derives most of its tone. Beyond that little ted talk, this attenuator is amazing. for the price it is easily the best on the market (that i've tried). its passive so it doesn't need continuous power, and is small enough to sit right behind my amp. It sounds great as it lets me drive my amp (silver tone Twin 12) at reasonable bedroom levels while getting the juiciest tone I've ever gotten. LTDR: This Attenuator is worth its weight in gold; if your setup is right for an attenuator

This atenuator works well . Does not get as hot as I thought it would , the amps I have used it with are 50w or less. I was surprised that you can not dial in NO attenuation . Even at the loudest setting it is cutting your output in half . But it hasn't been an issue for me yet. Also the line out is VERY useful . First thing I did was run it to another guitar amp and that worked great. You can dial in a nice mix of the two amps that way using the level control . But the level control seems to have no effect on the XLR line out. BE CAREFUL If you run this direct to a board or PA . However if you use the 1/4 inch output you have complete control oh how much signal you send . We used to use attenuator to tame our non master Marshalls . Now a days even a 30 watt amp can be too loud for many situations and the Bugera let's you get whatever you want out of your amp ant any volume level.

The PS1 is a resistance load passive attenuator and works with any tube amp up to 100 Watts (4, 8 or 16 Ohms) and your favorite speaker cabinet, plus provides a Line output with dedicated level control and an Emulated Mic output to send your signal to the mixing console. That's a lot on such a low price. It is built solid and all metal. It is a straight forward resistance load box. It is not a reactive load box and hence why the price. It simply takes the power from your amp, goes between your amp and speaker(s), reduces the load by resistance to lower levels. This unit does provide a direct out and an XLR out with speaker emulation that you can send the signal directly to a sound board/PA or other devices without mic'ng the speaker. But don't expect it to sound exceptional. It is good, not great. It does what it says it will do and at a price much less than others. There are other big name resistance boxes that cost 2-3x what this costs and does the exact same thing. It is not a reactive load box so do not confuse the two. Do a search online for the difference. Reactive load boxes contain resistors and capacitors designed to emulate the impedance curve of a speaker. The Bugera PS1 is simply resistors that soak up the wattage being output from the amplifier and dissipate it as heat (why the unit may feel hot if running a high wattage amp with this box turned way down to quiet levels). Resistive loads are simple, which tends to reduce their price. In saying that, there are many big names I could list here that sell the same type box for several hundred dollars and the Bugera is just as good IMO. Buy it! It has served me well, even in live performances using high end boutique amps.

I have a 1975 Peavy Musician 400 amp head that can pump out 200W of power that I recently refurbished and it works great. It is all discreet solid state components. I needed a passive device that would attenuate the amp head output to feed directly to interface to a recording box that interfaces to my laptop recording software. The Power Soak PS-1 did the trick! It has adjustable Line level output and Mic level output that interfaced with the correct input levels to my recording box interface and the recordings I am making are HIGH quality audio. With the amp head feeding directly into the recording box you get a clean record. If you used a mic to the guitar speaker you would pick up whatever sound in your studio. With this I only get my guitar and it is a high quality recording. I can adjust my amp volume to where I need it for best performance and then using the PS-1 I can set the volume to the guitar speaker cabinet to desired easy listening level without the concert volume the amp is set to. Great device. Works exactly as I needed for my guitar recordings.

When I received my Bugera PS1 I was immediately impressed with the build quality – a rugged, well-ventilated case with a solid base and rubberized feet. Although the soak control has a physical scratchy feel, it is not heard through in the speaker output. I connected the unit as instructed to my Line 6 Bogner Spider Valve 112 MKII loaded with a Celestion V30. Normally, I get my low volume distortion/gain sounds using the preamp modeling and one of the built-in overdrive stomp functions – this “works” but doesn't seem not to have the same soul of this amp when turn up – this preamp tone is always kind of a muffled, a meh tone (not bad but not great). Once I added the Bugera PS1, the amp came to life at any volume. I can blend the sweet but meaty Bogner output with the modeled preamp gain and finally hear the full potential of the amp at any volume. Similar improvements can be heard to the clean sounds. There is a slight tone change when the Bugera PS1 is engaged – nothing that can’t be fixed with a few adjustments to the amp tone controls. I believe the tone change is mainly due to the speaker's low volume response curve. I also tried the unit with my Peavey VK212 with similar results. Yes this unit does get a bit warm (this is normal). I did not test the line out function as I have always preferred a mic’d speaker over emulated speaker line outputs. The speaker output is ideal for recording and bedroom practicing. I would highly recommend this unit to anyone looking to get the most out of their tube amplifier and maintain volume control.

12/14/23 update, Still love this thing. I have a hot rod deluxe, 40 watts. I have cranked the amp all the way up. I experience no heat problems even after hours. I’ve noticed a slight treble decrease but can compensate with the amp control. This thing emulates the growl you would get burying the volume on the amp. Caveat, you will not get full volume with the attenuator volume turned all the way up. If you end up needing it all you will have to disconnect it. There is no bypass. I had a cheap volume volume control bridging the effects loop. It sounded ok but was lacking something. This is like the Boston group's Tom Scholtz power soak, It is the 6l6 power tubes that need to be pushed. This does that. I have a fender hot rod Benson model. It is 40 watts all tube. I push the volume on the amp to 8 and that drives the power tubes hot and gives that crunch with soak taking it down to where you can hear the pick on the strings. disclaimer here. I have nothing to do with the company or any distributor related this product I'm just an old man playing his guitar in his den that does not want the cops to be called. You must have one, 🧐You will likely require a male to female SPEAKER cable and a male to male cable. NOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENT CABLES. 🥵 instrument cables cannot handle the power and are like to fry something. Well, y’all know what I mean

Great product if it worked. It just stopped working and that really sucks because the idea behind it is awesome.

I got a PRS MT15 used from an 80s metal player cheap because the amp was too “dark and brutal”. After nearly blowing my eardrums twice with the high gain microphonics and hair-trigger lead master volume I was ready to sell the amp after a week of troubleshooting and scouring fixes. As it turns out one YouTuber with 47 amp heads makes the claim that this is the noisiest amp head by far. I went all-out to salvage this amp because I really wanted to believe the hype and love it, and I was frustrated. So I bought a noise gate and this Bugera passive attenuator. The noise gate helped a bit with the noise, but the lead master volume was still a hair trigger that I had to tweak carefully every time I wanted to change tones, not fun. The Bugera attenuator on the other hand not only tamed the noise, it allowed me to play maxed out even at the higher power 15W setting for the amp (this amp is famously loud for this power rating) at bedroom practice volume! As a result I was able to finally get the full range of tones from the amp with no need for a noise gate. I genuinely love playing with the amp now and strongly recommend this pair. Note: turning the attenuator dial counter-clockwise is the way to make the amp quiet, this was counter-intuitive to me at first.