Itās basically an extra volume control. The amp works as normal sending its signal to the speaker, and all the attenuator does is reduce the volume of that signal. Iād suggest suck it and see, if itās not right for you Thomann have a 30 day money back guarantee. Just donāt forget youāll need a couple of patch leads to connect it
Sweet amp! I love those features. Reverb, attenuator and even these speaker switches for impedance.
I was wondering what this does; you can change the path of power amp to speakers from I to II by patching it differently. What does it do? Does it work in conjunction with the attenuator next to it?
BTW for those wondering: an attenuator might sound like an extra volume control but it allows you to push it hard on the front end (turning up gain to create distortion created by the amp) while the attenuator wil make sure you can do it on friendly volumes. If you would turn it down in the front end, you just wouldnāt have that āsoft clipped distortionā people love tube amps for
Very nice amp, the Jensen speaker is also a great one to be in it; that particular 10ā is one I like to use if I mod an amp. An attenuator or Power soak would be a good idea, you would be able to crank it and get those gorgeous saturated soft clipped sounds!
My little Bugera 5W head has 1W and 0.1W settings built in, itās great for well cranked sound at bedroom levels!
fwiw,
and I could be wrong DarrellW.
But I just went and looked at the specs for the H605 amp and this is the speaker harmony says is in it.
Jensen P8R, 8ā 16Ī©" (copy and paste from the specs on the H605 from harmony web page). So a alnico 8āā best I read.
Hopefully Tod will let us know (?) which way it is since heās got one to actually look atā¦
Iāll have to agree though. If thatās a 8āā speaker in his H605. It surly does sound real good and sounds bigger than a 8āā speaker to me. That impresses me.
Hello everyone!
I had a little bit of time on Sunday to play with the new Harmony - the attenuator is So Cool! At each of the 3 power settings I was able to get to āedge of breakupā & managed to find good tone as well! 5w was quite loud - as I suspected & probably wonāt get much use, but 1w & .1w were really great! No noticeable difference in anything other than volume!
The only thing I couldnāt seem to get dialed in was a good sound with my acousticsā¦ it was OK, but not the clean warm sound/vibe Iād like. Itās probably just my inexperience with playing acoustic plugged in. One thing for sureā¦ Iām going to have to revisit the String Muting lessonsā¦ this amp seems to amplify my mistakes & extra string noise more than my Vox or Katanaā¦ probably the lack of effects added in with my other amps makes anything other than the notes Iām aiming for to be more clearly heard!
Hi Judi! @judi
I was getting a bit impatient - they didnāt have any of my actual money though, just some rewards points that didnāt cost me anything - so there was no harm in riding it outā¦ plus, earlier this year, I talked to one of the supervisors at Musicianās Friend who told me that if the amps were ever shipped from Harmony, Iād be the 2nd customer to get one!!! (Someone was waiting even longer than me)
Hi Ian! @Prof_Thunder
Donāt be too impressed - during the last 2.5 years, Iāve purchased 2 amps. I went for a Supro Delta King 12 that was way too loud & was returned/exchanged (gotta keep the Mrs. happy!) & a Boss Katana 50 Mk II on the recommendation of Justin & lots of others here in the Community. Still, as I do a lot of my play/practice at home when itās āquiet timeā I habitually play my electrics unplugged. BTW, the attenuator is built-in & works great!
Hi Rogier, @roger_holland
The air WAS moving yesterday, let me tell you! At 5w, it was uncomfortably loud when it was cranked up!!! (not sure at which age āuncomfortably loudā crept into my vocabularyā¦ I have a lot of tinnitus from a Van Halen concert in the summer of 1981ā¦ I was standing near the stageā¦ HUGE STACK of speakers about 15 feet awayā¦ woke up the next day with my ears ringing & itās never gone awayā¦ STILL, it wasnāt uncomfortable!)
Hey David! @BurnsRhythm
HaHaHa!!! This reminded me of Christmas mornings when the kids (we have 3) were littleā¦ sometimes, the best presents were the cardboard boxes & not what was inside! Good memories!
Brian, @brianlarsen
you are so BAD!!! I bet you ALWAYS peeked as a kid (& probably still do)!!!
As far as a demo, I tried to get past the āred light feverā yesterday, itās still got me by the tail & wonāt let go! Someday maybeā¦ suffice it to say that this was a really sweet amp & I think worth the wait!
Thanks Richard! @Richard_N
I need all the advice I can get - Youād think that someone whoās played at playing guitar for as long as I have would be further along the road by nowā¦ but Iām still stumbling along like one of those people whoās had a few too many & is having trouble going in a straight line!!!
Hi Lieven! @LievenDV
I havenāt got a clueā¦ this isnāt addressed in the Ownerās Manual & although I watched every demo of the amp Iāve found on the web, nothing mentions this. The amp sounds really wonderful though, I was really having fun with my tele cloneā¦ those spunky/spanky bridge pickup tones were a lot of fun!
I was playing it clean mostly but with the Gain dimed & volume all the way up on the LP really gave me some gritty sound! I will have to get some kind of distortion pedal in the future to add more bite to my humbuckers!
Hi Darrell! @DarrellW
I donāt have a lot of experience with different amps, but I know what I like when I hear it - I like this speaker too! The amp seems to be really āsolidāā¦ very well built & the reverb is surprisingly good for itās price range! Itās still the āhoneymoonā phase, I know, but so far Iām really, really pleased! Also, the speaker is an 8" speaker - I think itās a P8R - that sounds super-good!
If I missed anyone, thanks for the comments & good wishesā¦ hopefully, Iāll get something recorded with it & add to this thread at a later date early next year - Iām staying really busy with work, family & the holidays for now!
Tod
My bad, I realised that too late , Jensen speakers are good regardless of size - I have always used the 10ā because I found an old Fender Bassman 4x10 cab for a bargain price, it was really tatty and knocked about but the speakers were all good soā¦ā¦ā¦.
Embrace the āAngstā and publish the ārubbishā. I know I do
Thatās exactly what I was trying to say!!
I always attribute my tinnitus to using a floor sander without ear protection in 1991 but I think that only tipped me over the edge as the initial damage was done by the Ramones in 1976!
Lieven,
I had a chat session with someone from Harmony yesterday & found out that the jacks are for the ampās output. The cable you see plugged into Jack #1 is the connection to the internal speaker. So, Jack #1 OR Jack #2 can be used for a speaker cab along with or in place of the internal speakerā¦ they did warn me not to use the amp without any speaker connected, though. Also, since itās a 5w amp, a large, multi-speaker cab might not provide āoptimalā sound but a small external cab should sound goodā¦ their words, not mine.
Thanks for your input!
Tod
Ah thanks
Btw,
You might be surprised how good a 5w amp with a large speaker sounds like
The speakers make up a LARGE portion of the sound!
Cool!
Iāll have to try it soon, one of my coworkers has a Marshall head/cab setupā¦ maybe heāll let me run my Harmony through the speaker cab!
Thanks!
Tod
yeah, just make sure youāve got the righ impedance setting!
Tod, did harmony have anything to say about what impedance speaker(s) you should be using if you use both speaker inputs?
Iāve got two amps with external speaker capabilities.
One amp says to not use the 8 ohm combo speaker along with another external cab. It says that if I want to use both speaker inputs I must have a total load of 8 ohms together. ie. I would need to plug in two 16 ohm speakers, 1 into ea. speaker input to achieve the 8 ohm spec. Apparently that amps really wants to see itās specified 8 ohm load, or cause possible damage to the amp if it donāt see that 8 ohm load is the way I read it.
The other amp is solid state and states that it can have a 2nd speaker added as long as itās not less that 8 ohms. That amp apparently can take 1 ea. 8 ohms speaker into both speaker jacks resulting in a 4 ohm load. On that amp the specs say itās a 80w amp w/ a 8 ohm load. Or itās a 100w amp with both speaker jacks used when using itās internal 8 ohm speaker and a 8 ohm external speaker (4 ohm load).
Both of these amps have a 8 ohm factory speaker.
I just donāt want you to damage your new amp as apparently there are different circuits that require different approaches to what you can and shouldnāt do for that added speaker. Especially if itās like the first amp I described that really wantās itās 8 ohm load and nothing else will do or damage is possible.
This is just food for thought. Hoping what I wrote makes sense. Statements Iāve made are using the owners manuals of āmyā amps for my comments.
ymmv.
Hey Jimā¦
This is valuable information!
Thanks!
I wouldnāt think this will be much of an issueā¦ Iām a āliving Roomā player, not a working musician & I really, really, really donāt want to damage an amp I waited 2.5 years to getā¦ ā¦ I may just use the internal speaker only & never mind about using any other speakers!!! My bud with the Marshall does quite a bit of gigging & I would think knows a lot more about hooking up gear than I do - that being said, Iām not going to attempt anything that would blow up my new amp either!
Tod