Question - re-amping vs. Ho/Ultimate Attenuator

Was thinking about the same thing

Have THD HP,but am not satisfied with it on bigger attenuation levels
So decided to go the reamp way.HP set to load+SS power amp
Yust got Rocktron Velocity 150 power amp on ebay(didnt arrive yet)
I belive neutral sounding SS power amp is the way to go.

Never tried UA or compared it against reamp rig tho...

 

Just buy the UA. Its just one box, two cables and sounds fantastic. By the time you buy a hotplate/similar and a power amp, you have about the same amount of money into it. And its a bigger setup. It's funny, because people on TGP don't want to believe the hype when it comes to the UA. For some reason, because it reamps with a solid state power amp, it bothers the tube sniffers. There are however, quite a few believers these days. The UA is the best attentuator out there. I bought one and it is probably the most inspiring piece of gear I have purchased in a long time.
It sent my hotplate running for craigslist.

 

Here's my very first UA post from EXACTLY one year ago today.

subject:I would trade every pedal I own for my Ultimate Attenuator

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=359447&highlight=ultimate

 

Im not shure about the money thing....
UA is expensive and hart to get a used one...Ho is hard to get if your from Europe-the guy doesnt have an email
HPs and SS amps are very cheap used.

How the two compare?Am not shure,and is defenetly more practical to have yust one box...

 

Joe, the VHT would work fine as your power amp. I used the power amp in jack on a Soldano SLO 100 for a long time. I've used a Komet attenuator and a Kendrick/Trainwreck attenuator for the load. Just make sure you have it set on a couple clicks. I take a line out of that into a Presonic parametric EQ, a Lexicon LP-1 and then into the power amp. I think it sounds better than any attenuator but it's also a lot more gear. I've been messing with this for a while and love how it works but I take no responsibility if you blow anything up trying it

 

I have a UA and really like it. I also have owned two THD hotplates for a while now and once tried setting one to "load" and using a power amp to reamp it. To my ears the Hotplate on the load setting sounded like it does in the -12 and -16 ranges, not so good. Then reamped it was still "no so good" only louder. YMMV.

 

There isn't any difference between them but I think they're pretty much the same thing. I'm not running a speaker through the brake. I get none of the artifacts of attenuator tone running this setup. I don't know how the Webers are put together. You should probably email Ted and ask him if it would work for this.

 

The UA has about a 30 ohm load, and the Hotplate is probably closer to the rated ohms on each unit. I've heard that HO settled on the higher load value for mainly tonal reasons. I also think the UA attenuator doesn't bring the signal down as far as line level before it is reamped, judging by the size of the wire wound pot it uses. Maybe that helps the tone also, that is by not bringing it down so far. Plus that also reduces the required gain and associated circuitry and/or gain stages of the reamp circuit. Just a guess...

 

Hey Joe! See if you can find the entries by John Phillips on "bedroom level" guitar playing. He was using a Mesa, thru attenuator, thru PA style power amp into guitar speaker IIRC and was very happy with it.

As for the various attenuators, I've owned GT, VHT, Sholtz, Altair and Weber and like the sound of the Weber best as an attenuator. In your application (only using the line out) I can't see that it would make a lot of difference. One nice thing about the weber is full EQ on the recording output, so you don't need an outboard EQ...