Big Monk
Well-known member
The discussion around silent practice, IR and Iridium/Humboldt machines led me to plug in last night to my modified Marshall MS-2.
A while back, when I built my Celestion loaded speaker cab, I modified my MS-2 with a variable resistive attenuator. Stock, it comes with a 500 ohm resistor across the headphone out jack. I never liked the headphone out, and since my son and I both had one, I modified his as it also needed a replacement jack.
I installed a 1kB pot in place of the headphone limiting resistor.
Through a real cabinet, and with the potentiometer in place, it makes an incredible fun practice tool. On the drive side, it works well as a super crunchy Marshall amp, but with the clean side engaged and careful setting of the variable resistor, it can work with your pedal board to provide a very tactile experience for low (like less than a whisper) practice.
Since it has a stereo jack for the headphone out, you have two built in ranges of signal:
1.) With the jack half inserted, you can go from full volume (stock) to any level of attenuation from the 0-1k ohms. With it turned all the way down, it’s lower than conversational levels.
2.) With the jack full inserted, you can crank the Knob all the way up (no attenuation) and you get a very low output because you are essentially fooling it into think headphones are plugged in. Turning the Knob down yields much smaller volumes, so that you can practice barely above a whisper with your full board plugged in.
A while back, when I built my Celestion loaded speaker cab, I modified my MS-2 with a variable resistive attenuator. Stock, it comes with a 500 ohm resistor across the headphone out jack. I never liked the headphone out, and since my son and I both had one, I modified his as it also needed a replacement jack.
I installed a 1kB pot in place of the headphone limiting resistor.
Through a real cabinet, and with the potentiometer in place, it makes an incredible fun practice tool. On the drive side, it works well as a super crunchy Marshall amp, but with the clean side engaged and careful setting of the variable resistor, it can work with your pedal board to provide a very tactile experience for low (like less than a whisper) practice.
Since it has a stereo jack for the headphone out, you have two built in ranges of signal:
1.) With the jack half inserted, you can go from full volume (stock) to any level of attenuation from the 0-1k ohms. With it turned all the way down, it’s lower than conversational levels.
2.) With the jack full inserted, you can crank the Knob all the way up (no attenuation) and you get a very low output because you are essentially fooling it into think headphones are plugged in. Turning the Knob down yields much smaller volumes, so that you can practice barely above a whisper with your full board plugged in.
