Do you often play the guitar at home and want to overdrive your tube amp at a low volume? If yes, then you’ve landed on the right article, as you’ll get to know all about it here.
Overdriving a tube amp at low volume can be done by numerous pieces of equipment, many of which might already be in your gear. Some of those include using a tube converter, reactive load device, output attenuators, isolation cabinets, master volume controls, and voltage reduction controls among others.
In this article, you’ll get to know all about the ideal setup to overdrive tube amps and play silently in your bedroom, how to overdrive a tube amp at low volume, and other important things to remember. Continue reading to get all the answers that you’re looking for.
The ideal setup to overdrive a tube amp at low volume and play silently
Most musicians probably spend a great deal of time playing and practicing in their bedrooms. There is limited space, a bunch of grumpy neighbors, and impatient family members who make it impossible to overdrive the tube amp properly. Still, you’ll want to achieve a big, fan tone that has the qualities of playing on a loud stack. It’ll be important to understand how you can create an ideal set up so that it allows you to overdrive the tube amp and get great tones in your bedroom.
Your home recording studio will typically be a bedroom-sized room equipped with a couple of guitar amps. You may even have a few smaller tube amps to serve the purpose of recording and practicing. It’s important to experiment, as it’ll help you achieve a great overdriven tone at low volume and wattage.
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But what is a big tone, and why do you want to achieve it on a tube amp? Generally, you’ll want to have the full-bodied character and overdriven effect when you’re driving your tube amp really hard. You’ll want the sound of the glowing hot tubes on the edge of breakup and speakers pushing air. This will make your guitars and pedals sound warmer, fatter, and more compressed. Moreover, it’ll make your ears adjust as you try to even out the transients and focus on the mids. It can be achieved on low volume, so you’ll need to simulate it.
Get the right amp to do the job
It’s a big possibility that you can achieve great overdriven tones from almost all kinds of equipment. Getting a tube amp that is suited for a smaller room will save you a great deal of headaches. Tube amps tend to be easier to create overdriven sounds on lower volume compared to solid-state amps. They have a much more static character and can sound pretty thin.
Having a 50W or 100W tube amp will be out of the question for guitarists with bedroom studies. However, a 15W or 30W will still be loud enough, and most of them need a slight volume to sound as intended. Most bedrooms don’t require more than a 5W or sometimes even a 1W amp. Amps like the Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18, Laney Cub12, and Hiwatt’s Tube Series come with built-in power scaling. It will allow you to down-size the wattage to as low as 5W or even 1W. This allows you to set the guitar amp at the edge of breakup or distortion without going too loud. This is similar to attenuation, but slightly more effective.
The amp needs to feature a master volume control aside from gain. If not, you will basically just be raising the distortion level. It can leave you with limited headroom and, on low levels, with a thin sound. Amps having a scooped mid-range like Fender amps sound brighter and thinner on low volume. Meanwhile, amps having more midrange such as Hiwatt sound warmer and more balanced.
Never neglect the amp’s midrange settings
One of the biggest mistakes that guitarists make, both on stage and in bedroom studios, is that they neglect the midrange. When practicing alone, your guitar will often sound the best with a mids scooped tone. The lows and highs will make the tone truly scream. Meanwhile, your ears are designed for picking up on the mid-range. This is where the main register of a human’s voice lies. When you bring fabulous mid-scooped tones into the picture, your guitar completely drowns behind the keys and drums. This will apply to bedroom setups as well. Crank the midrange and your guitar will sound fatter and warmer, while you’ll be getting a richer sustain.
The lows can sometimes mess up the sound. When you’re playing alone in your bedroom, you’ll want to feel the lows. This is where the bass and drums are. While you won’t have a full band in your house, too much low can make your guitar sound flabby and muddy instead of tight and focused. You should ideally be lowering the bass, cranking up the mids, and keeping the treble at a moderate level. The exact settings will depend on your guitar, tube amp, and personal taste.
Some amps come with a tone or presence control that boosts between 4-7kHz, depending on the amp. You should be careful though and try to find the right balance between this and the treble.
Never be afraid of giving your amp a bit of breakup. You probably wouldn’t want full overdrive, but a super clean amp can sometimes sound thin. You should preferably raise the gain until you start noticing a breakup. If your amp is having two channels, experiment with the gain channel and have it as clean as possible. Often, this will be a better basis for the pedals than a purely clean channel. What you should want is to compensate for the effects that you’re getting from riding the tubes hard on the bigger guitar amps.
Power attenuator
An attenuator such as the THD Hot Plate should be placed between the guitar amp and the speaker cab. It’ll allow you to crank up your amp while maintaining a neighborhood-friendly volume. They’re best used on the amp’s gain to create distortion and overdrive. In that case, you’ll want to place the modulations and delays in the guitar amp’s effects loop. However, if you’re running your amp clean, a power attenuator will be rather redundant. This is the case as you can just lower the volume on your amp. Besides, why not just purchase a tube amp with a lower wattage?
Volume pedal
Many forget volume pedals in bedroom setups, but they essentially act as attenuators placed at the end of the chain. A volume pedal will allow you to raise both the master and gain on your guitar amp. Moreover, it’ll also increase the volume on the pedals to push the amp slightly and keep a low volume.
Booster in the loop
Although using the send/return effects loop on guitar amps is an acquired taste, a great tip would be to place a transparent booster in the loop. When you rank up the gain on your amp, you’re essentially boosting the preamp. This will add overdrive, but it’ll also make the amp sound thinner. The fitness will sit in the output stage, but it can even be boosted by playing loud. Placing a booster in the loop drives the output stage harder without raising the volume.
It must be a transparent, mids scooped boosters like TC Electronics Spark Booster, Buffalo FX Power Booster, or something similar. Set the EQ on your pedal neutral, have the volume above unity, and the gain as high as possible. However, all this should be done without your amp starting to break up. Some guitarists prefer using an EQ for this application. This will give you the needed tools to boost the volume while enhancing certain frequencies like the mid-range.
Booster pedals
A pickup booster should be placed first in the pedal chain. It’ll boost the input signal from the guitar to the pedalboard. It is designed for responding to the character of the pickups and the dynamics of your guitar-playing. You could use something like a Fire Bootle from Effectrode on your pedalboard. It comes with a tube, making the tone warmer and slightly fatter. But it also has a switch to roll off the highs. In short, the pedal can make a thin-sounding Tele or Strat sound like a Les Paul with P90s or humbuckers. This will be an extremely versatile and handy little tool.
Apply convenient boosters like TC Electronics Spark Booster and Buffalo FX Power Booster placed after the high-gain pedals. For simulating the effect of a cranked tube amp, you should set the volume a bit higher than unity, and gain at the edge of the breakup. This makes your cleans sound warmer and when combined with distortion and overdrive, they’ll sound smoother and have more sustain.
Crank the pedals
Some gain pedals will have a dynamic volume stage. This means that lowering or increasing the volume changes the character of the pedal. Increasing the volume of your distortion or overdrive will boost the amp. This will again make your pedal sound smoother and a bit more compressed. You should experiment with it and find the perfect balance between boosting and not altering the tone a lot.
Reliable compressor
A compressor may not be the most obvious purchase, especially if you’re on a tight budget. But again, you’ll have to compensate for the lack of tube and speaker compression, making the tone warmer and smoother. A compressor will balance the signal by tightening the lows and then rounding off the high transients. You shouldn’t be afraid to compress more than you would normally do with a loud amp.
Pedals that emphasize the mid-range
Vintage style fuzz, boosters, and muffs have little midrange. As mentioned above, midrange will be important for the guitar to cut through the dense band mix. It’s important for the pedals to sound smooth and fat. If everything falls, you’ll need to reconsider the pedals and get something that has more mids.
Overdrives like OCD and Rover Drive and TSP/OD808 or similar have a lot of mid-range. Similarly, distortions like Evolution and RAT have more mids and compression. Often, they’ll sound a lot better than a buzzy fuzz. There are some stacked Big Muff close available such as Iron Bell, MojoHand, and Skreddy P19. Although they aren’t straight-up crème de le crème, in many cases they’ll sound better. The lack of midrange and plenty of low ends makes the tone sound thin and muddy. Even though you may find some mid-range boosted pedals boxy sounding and thin in the lows, they’ll make the guitar sound warmer and stand out.
Hotter pickups
Vintage-style single coils come with a low output and little mids, which can sound a bit thin on smaller amps with low volume. Try to swap the pickups for something hotter, like Texas Specials or a set of SSL5s. You can also go for P90s or 50s humbuckers. It’ll compensate for the warmth and natural compression that you normally would get on louder amps.
Cables and strings
High-quality cables and fresh strings sometimes get overlooked, but they’re important to get the tones you want. Having low or bad-quality cables can both drain and color the tone. Old strings can sound dead and fail to respond as well to your playing as new strings.Â
You shouldn’t compromise on the cables and strings because you’re practicing at home. The tone is present in every part of the setup. Understandably, having a tight budget may force you to focus on other components of your rig. However, get the best cables that you can possibly afford and restring them as often as you can. It’ll make a great difference.
One of the best tips for any situation is that you shouldn’t stop experimenting with your gear. It’ll help you know the full potential of the guitar gear you have. It doesn’t always have to be expensive or very high-end stuff. Most of the tone lies in your mind, fingers, and talent to make the most of whatever you’ve got.Â
How to overdrive a tube amp at low volume
Whether you’re practicing alone or your bandmates don’t have time, you will likely spend a lot of time playing in your bedroom. You’ll probably want to find a moment when no one is home so that you can play with ample freedom. But then you’ll also have to factor in grumpy neighbors who keep on knocking at your door with noise complaints. It can sometimes land you in trouble as many states have laws regarding noise complaints. Yes, this will probably result in more than enough frustration. You’ll probably want to overdrive your tube amp at a low volume.
While you can keep the volume down slightly, you’ll still want to gain as much as possible from this experience. You will need a solid tone too, as all the effects and feelings linked to playing at a concert hall. You won’t want to limit your experience just because you’re playing in your bedroom. So, how will you make your guitar sound warmer and how to overdrive a tube amp at low volume? How to get your ears to adjust to low volume without doing too much work?
There are a few things that you might already have in your guitar setup that might ease this experience. It’ll give you a rich sound without actually making your neighbors bang your door with noise complaints. There are methods like using a reactive load device, output attenuators, tube converter, isolation cabinets, master volume controls, and volume reduction controls. These are all tried and tested methods and the results will be flawless. You might notice slight differences between different methods, but they’ll all bring you success. It’ll all depend on what type of sound you’re looking to achieve. Play around, experiment with them and try to figure it out yourself.
There are some other alternatives that you can try as well. They aren’t that common, some might even find them slightly stupid, but they will definitely work. The funny thing is that not many will think about them, yet these methods are right under your nose. So without further ado, let’s begin to know how to overdrive a tube amp at low volume.
Placing large objects in front of the speaker cab
You should get something large and then throw it in there, as it’ll end up grabbing some volume. It needs to be quite soft. For instance, a pillow might work well. You can throw in your jacket over it too. Use whatever you can get your hands on.
Eliminate a speaker
Sometimes you might be using multiple speakers instead of one large option. This way, the power will be split in half. For reducing the volume, grab one of the speakers and hide it in a box before covering it with clothes. This way, you can isolate it for eliminating its output and the problem will be solved.
Buy cheap speakers
Get a couple of speakers having a lower efficiency or sensitivity. Practically, you’ll need to check out the speaker’s sound output. The result might not be the best, but you’ll still be able to overdrive the tube amp at low volume. This way, neither your family nor your neighbors will be annoyed. Now that you’re done with cheap solutions, there are some ideas to overdrive the tube amp at low volume without losing quality.
Reactive load device
Such a device will connect between the amp out and the speakers. The device will reduce the wattage and then push the signal into the internal amp. It’ll get sent back into the speakers at the volume of your choice. It can be rather quiet, but it’ll sound louder than the actual amp, with a lot of flexibility.
Output alternators
Output alternators generally go between the speakers and the output of your tube amp. These will reduce the wattage and affect the volume too. If you’re choosing this method, ensure that you’re investing in a quality set. Make sure you don’t go for cheap options, as cheap alternators can burn up.
Tube converter
Get a decent tube converter that isn’t too expensive. Then, plug the converter into the output tube socket. You’ll be able to use less power by utilizing nine pins instead of eight. The output power of the amp will be reduced dramatically, sometimes by as much as 75%. While the sound is slightly unusual, at least you’ll be able to keep the noise down.
Voltage reduction controls
This option will allow you to work on the DC voltage. It’ll be all about the power, as less power will involve a lower volume. Put the voltage down and then play with other parameters for adjusting the sound. The good news here is that the tone shouldn’t really change at all.
Master volume controls
You’ll inevitably run into the master volume controls at some point. Most modern tube amps come with master volume controls. If you’ve got any of them, you will have no issues at all. You can even install the master volume controls yourself or take the help of a technician if you aren’t certain.
Isolated cabinets
Isolation cabinets will represent the professional solution to the overdriving tube amp problem. You’ll have to enclose the speaker in a box and then cover it up with clothes. You will require multiple speakers for this. Once the others have been sealed in a box, most of the sound would come through the speaker that is left alone.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading. Hopefully, now you know a lot more about the ideal setup to overdrive tube amps and play silently in your bedroom, how to overdrive a tube amp at low volume, and other important things to remember. Overdriving your tube amp at a low volume can be done through numerous methods, some of which might already be in your guitar rig. Some of the simplest methods include using a tube converter, reactive load device, output attenuators, isolation cabinets, master volume controls, and voltage reduction controls among others.
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