Solution to good tone at bedroom volumes!

Wow, that's pretty cool.

It’s just a potentiometer in a box. As such it’s kinda expensive.
Steve Dalman provided a simple guide to making these on FDP maybe 15 years ago. Various ebayers ranwith that and sold them for maybe $15.

Thanks Peppy! The video doesn’t play but the info is good.

i want one!

I’ve got one floating around that I bought on eBay maybe 15 years ago. I used it with nice results on a Classic 30.

I'm another member that built one of Steve Dallman's boxes back around 2003. I had a Blues Deluxe at the time.

I no longer need one for any of my amps now, but I have made several for various other applications since.
When I saw the video, I didn't realise it was the same thing. Seeing the price of them I presumed it must have some whizz-bang electronic circuitry in there!

This is the last one I made a few years ago: (and one guts shot)
 

TMI!!!! Ryder!

If it has a volume pot wired between two jacks... you've got the "right thing".

That's literally all it is. However I did put a treble bleed cap on the one shown.

TMI = Too Much Information!

That box you have there isn't like the JHS or mine. It appears to be a some kind of "dummy load" box (or something) that goes in line with the speaker output. I'm guessing that's a big 8 ohm resistor that's wired into that circuit.

Not sure what that one's meant to do, but the boxes in the thread go in & out (between) an FX loop.

A friend of mine had a HRD, it was way too loud on "2".  It makes sense that you'd want to tame it, but that looks more like an "on/off" switch.  Maybe for silent recording or using an amp with headphones?  Not sure.

I’m sorry I can’t remember. I didn’t do recording or use headphones with it.

I just bought a master volume box from the link below. Cost me £15 here in the UK and well worth it in my view. At 70 I mostly play at home nowadays and have also suffered from the dreaded "decent tone at bedroom volumes syndrome". As I much prefer the sound of my BJr' with the master on 12 and on stage the volume on 4 -5 I found that at home anything more than 1 on the volume would have the wife saying the neighbours will complain. In the month I have had the VBM I can have the amp master at 12, vol at 4 and get a satisfying bedroom volume sound with the VBM between 9 and 12 o'clock. Best guitar related purchase I have made in a while along with a Snark tuner.
www.seanmandrake.com/Products/VBM.aspx

Guitar pots tend to be 250k - 500k, which is a bit higher than ideal (100k) for this, so I don’t recommend it. But if it works fine for you then great, if it sounds good it is good.
The issue being the capacitive load that the cable plugged into the pot output. A cable with a lot of capacitance, combined with a high value pot, will result in the very high end of frequency response being rolled off at mid way settings. Whereas high and low settings retain the full, flat frequency response.
Also mid settings will also be more susceptible to hum pick up.
To avoid that with a high value pot, a short or high grade instrument type cable should be used on the pot output, being careful to route it away from power transformers.
Of course it may be that a slight roll off of high end frequencies (which can make distortion sound harsh) at mid settings is exactly why the box works well for you 😀

I'm quite certain 100k is what I have in my box pictured above.

As you can see, I also put a cap on there as a treble bleed. I don't know if it was completely necessary, but I added it anyway.

I bought one of these after this thread and it's pretty cool.

Allows me to get reasonable tone from my blues deluxe in a small studio.

Amp still sounds better un-restricted but my ears can't take it in such a small space.

I probably still need a Princeton Reverb...