Bugera PS1 Power Soak 3-stars Reviews

Resistive load

It works as a dummy load or resistive attenuator. The line outputs are a pretty bad joke. The rheostat causes noise when operated. Construction is sturdy, though and the price is low. You get what you pay for, it does what it says on the box.

Colours the Sound

These units sound like a bandpass filter to my ears. There is a big loss of high end, leaving you with a resonant honky sound. I tested the unit against my Captor for comparison, and it's night and day. The sound discolouration doesn't appear to be linked to the attenuation level either. I can't recommend one these unless you want your valve amp and cabinet to sound like a 6'' combo amp.

To much change of the sound for me

I liked the fact that it seems well built and sturdy. The motion on the rotary knob on the other hand felt not that comfortable to me.

It does what it's supposed to do, lowering the output of the total volume, but in my opinion it changed the sound in a way that I didn't like.

A reasonable attenuator

I have no complaints, for an attenuator it does what it is supposed to do. And they all will compress the high range. Just expected it to compress a little less.

It simply sound bad

This is good if you are a amp technician and you need a dummy load just to make some no-sound testing.

The sound is terrible, the high frequencies are lost, the middle-bass range become muddy even at low attenuation levels.

OK the price is very low, but I wish I had tested it earlier (properly) and I probably would have return it.

Not good for a clean amp: Fender 65' DRRI

When my roughly 8 years old AlenGeere WattKiller 100 stopped working I needed a new attenuator for my Deluxe Reverb. Reviews were good as well as the price for such unit. So, I ordered one. Since I didn't have the chance the compare with my old unit. I couldn't be sure about the sound quality at first. But now I am sure that it adds a considerable amount of distortion to the amp's output through the loudspeaker. The sound is much cleaner when I remove the attenuator between the amp-out and loudspeaker. For a high gain amp, this might be a issue that one can ignore, but not with a clean amp. Thus if you consider this product for a clean amp, I wouldn't recommend it. If I wouldn't have missed the return period, I would definitely return it and look for alternatives.

In my opinion the unit lacks of a very important feature though it is very interesting one with 3 output options and 2 control knobs for speaker output and line-out: Bypass switch! It would even make it okay to keep the unit for me! I could activate it when I need amp overdrive and bypass it when I play clean in lower volume levels. Sadly, it doesn't have such feature...

Now I am looking into repairing my old attenuator and trying to find a buyer for this one. :(