THD Hot Plate Attenuator Reviews

[brandondrury]

THD Hot Plate Attenuator @ Musiciansfriend

THD Hot Plate Attenuator Description
The THD Hot Plate Attenuator is a power attenuator and noise reducer that lets you attain the incredible sound of your amp running at high output and full distortion but at recording, small club, and neighbor-friendly volumes. It also makes a perfect dummy load.

A power attenuator is simply a device placed between the speaker output and the speaker cabinet. It acts like a huge master volume control and permits the amp to be turned up most or all the way while absorbing most of the power generated by the amplifier and turning this power into heat. It passes a small part of the power to the speaker.

Designed for use strictly with vacuum tube guitar amplifiers, each version of the Hot Plate is optimized for a specific impedance. These inductive loads are frequency-compensated, which means you get the best possible sound for that impedance speaker and amplifier combination. Plus the Hot Plate is no simple power attenuator. It offers many capabilities that make it a great addition to any tone-hungry player's arsenal.

Built-in Noise Reduction

The THD Hot Plate is the only attenuator on the market with built-in noise reduction to reduce the hiss and hum between notes. Its passive, single-ended noise-reduction system provides approximately 10dB of broadband noise reduction without gating or pumping and without affecting the tone of the amp. A by-product of the noise reduction circuit is that it generates light via a front-mounted bulb as you play. The harder you play, the brighter it glows.

Tone Controls

The Hot Plate is also the only attenuator offering a Bright switch and a Deep switch for tailoring your sound. The Bright switch gives you 2 different high-frequency levels so you can compensate for an overly bright or dull speaker cabinet. The Deep switch offers 2 distinct bass settings to help you fill out the bottom end or reduce the bass in a cabinet with too much low end.

Adjustable Line Out

THD Hot Plates also feature a Line Out, which is adjustable by its own volume control, giving it a wide range of applications. At higher settings, it can provide enough signal to drive the input of a separate power amp for slaving. The middle range of settings is useful for most rackmount effects. And turned most of the way down, the Hot Plate's Line Out will drive the instrument input of another guitar amplifier for extra power and volume.

Will it hurt my amp?

The THD Hot Plate will not damage your amplifier. When you play continuously at full output, you cause your tubes to age more quickly than they would at lower volumes. Using a Hot Plate will maintain the life of your tubes at exactly the same rate, no more or less, as when you play straight through the speaker.

Using a Hot Plate will also not hurt your transformer any more than playing through a speaker as long as the impedances are matched (i.e., 8-ohm setting on the amp, 8-ohm speakers, and an 8-ohm attenuator). The Hot Plate puts the same load on the transformer as a speaker (which is why it makes such a good dummy load).

[ryanjonrage]

I've used this before. The only thing I found to be inaccurate was this:

When you play continuously at full output, you cause your tubes to age more quickly than they would at lower volumes. Using a Hot Plate will maintain the life of your tubes at exactly the same rate, no more or less, as when you play straight through the speaker.

The point of an attenuator is to drive your amp and use the attenuator to lower the volume of your amp so you can get crazy amounts of gain at a low volume. Don't get me wrong, they are great tools to use.. Especially for recording, but they WILL burn you tubes quicker than if you ran your amp with out one. Obviously you'll burn your tubes if you play at full output, but who does that with a tube amp? They get way too loud.

This is a great tool for recording, especially with heavier music genres, but I don't suggest it for daily use.

[cky751]

I tried it with my friends mesa and it didn't work to well.