Harley Benton PA-100 Power Attenuator 4-stars Reviews

works great, knobs feel a little stiff

Excellent pour le prix

Très facile à installer et à prendre en main. Excellente atténuation, utilisé sur ampli Engl 100W à lampe.

Can't fault the value for money here.

Great value compared to all other attenuators. Allows for full-on power amp roar at bedroom(ish) volume with sustain for days! Does suck tone a bit, but even the expensive ones do that - and I'm talking about those costing many times more than this HB PA-100 unit.

Checked the solder work thoroughly because I didn't want to fry my amp and. nothing to worry about, its all neat, tidy and thorough.

Good job, especially at such a low price.

Simple Product

It can save money, and your ears :) get one if you have a load amp.

Well priced alternative to many more expensive non-reactive units..

If you can’t justify paying many times more for a “Reactive” load box, but want an easy, simple, economic way to avoid upsetting housemates and neighbours, then this does the job well..

I was tempted to give it 5 stars, because it seems unfair to mark down such an affordable piece of gear for having slightly cheap feeling inputs/outputs.. But I wouldn’t want anyone to think they’re getting perfection at this price..

Affordable attennuator that does the job

Gear used:

Marshall DSL20HR

Bugera G5

Sound: does the job for both the amps listed above. I am able to crank the amps and get the desired tube distortion without the high volume.

Feature: the line out and DI out is a nice touch. Separate speaker out and line level out control is also a good addition.

Build quality: The housing doesn't feel to good and is quite thin , the knobs also feel scratchy. Not so good on the build quality.

TOP attenuator

Prons: Price, quality of build, doesnt change the sound of the amp.

Cons: too big in size.

Cheap solution

Pos

-cheap attenuator

-line out helps for rec

-XLR out works like DI box

Neg

-cheap manufacture

-change the sound a little bit (its not tube creaspy sound)

for this money it's a one-way purchase!!!

All works fine, except…

The cab simulation out of the xlr works quite meh. Other than that, works fine.

Okay attenuator, great dummy load

As the headline says, as an attenuator it's not the best. It does the job, it lowers the volume, but like other reviews says it does change the sound quite a bit.

However, if you want to record your valve amp silently and directly, this thing is great for the money! The XLR output with a speaker sim is sh*t tbh, but the line out is where it's at. Besides, why would you want to record and not add your own IRs?

Of course, for this price there are some drawbacks. There's obviously no way of loading your own IRs in to the thing, so if you want to play live you have to make do with the previously mentioned sh*t XLR out. The speaker level knob also feels scratchy, while the line level knob is fine.

All in all this is a sturdy little box that works great for the bedroom musician who want the valve amp sound and the goodwill of the neighbours.

all i need

For the price, you shouldnt complain about anything of this device. Yes a 500 euro unit has more options(?) and sounds a bit closer to the original sound of the amp (like the rockcrusher i compared it with) but is that really worth the extra 430 euros? I'd rather have some cool pedals of guitar for that :-)! So in my opinion totally worth it! does what it needs to and for my (non-professional) use, all i need. Now i can play my ac30 without causing a local earthquake!

Gets the job done!

I found the built-in cabsim totally useless, but as a line-out(and use your own cabsims on the other side) simple attenuator it's totally great and does the job!

Big

It's quite big. Too big for my purpose, Cannot place it on my amp....and as i use the overdrive from pedals it's not a necessary attribute for the amp i use at home. A simple soundlevel attenuator in the effectsloop is sufficient i found out. It looks like a sturdy, well made piece of gear and the level knob makes a screeching sound. This is supposed to be like it. It's not touching the surface or anything. I did send it back without hassle.

Great attenuator for the price

Got this to use with a Fender Blues Junior Tweed.

Although the clean tone is great, I never liked the overdriven sound of the amp unless the master volume was cranked up to window rattling level, it's only 15W but it gets pretty damn loud. At low volume the preamp only distortion never sounded great to me, same with overdrive pedals (OCD).

With the attenuator, master cranked up and volume set to start breaking up, it sounds way better and also feels a lot more responsive to play. I have no experience of more expensive attenators but for the price this is a definite improvement, to my ears anyway. It sounds particularly good with a Strat.

Almost 5 stars.

As an attenuator, this works great, I'm sure someone with better ears than mine could pick fault with it, but to me it did everything it should have, allowing me to crank my 40W without making my ears bleed.

But I was hoping to use it as a load box, while sending a signal to headphone amp for silent practice. It can't do that. That's not it's fault, it's mine, I should have researched more before buying it. Other than that, especially for the price, it's a great unit.

Seems to do the job okay, although it does have a noticeable effect on frequency responses at the extremes. With some dialing in and balancing between master volume and this it can soak a decently loud tube amp (joyo mjolnir, says 15W but I suspect more) and cut it back to room volumes where people can still have a conversation over you.

Works well

Does what it is suppose to. Does affect the sound quality a bit. About the same as switching the amp to a lower power setting.

As good a solution as there is for wanting to drive a tube amp hard without being too loud

Does what all passive attenuators do, at the lowest price of them all

It does what every passive attenuators do - loads your amp and attenuates the volume feeded to your speaker cab. It even has a fan for which the power is taken from the output of your amp. The fan rotates only when you play the guitar so you do not hear it. Sound quality is the same as with every passive attenuator - it does suck some high end, but nothing that can't be dialed out with the EQ knobs of your amp. Overall, if you are looking for a cheap attenuator, you can't go wrong with this one. Even more expensive passive attenuators won't bring better sound. Have not tried the DI out function as I do not do recordings, but I can guess it is not something to write home about. This is the cheapest passive attenuator you can buy in Europe and I am happy with the quality I got for my money.

Good value

Was VERY hesitant about a "cheap" attenuator to use with my Marshall SC20H . It's definitely a great buy. very simple to use . Not quite sure about the line out function as i cant seem to get it to work but its not a big deal as i use my line out from the Marshall.

This was really bought to mute the cab or adjust the volume if needed.

is it the best attenuator in the world ? probably not but is it worth $100 ? DEFINITELY !!!

Now its on to the HB cabinets.

Power auttenuator

A good peice of equiptment to make a good monitor mix while recording guitar tracks at a low volume setup,

My technique is to record guitar DI for reamping and Amp send DI for IR based premix as a reference.

the PA-100 does it`s job for making a preprod mix, BUT in a wierd way it saturates and colours the amp signal to both speakers and DI signal. So I would never use A PA-100 based track on a finished mix, but for reference and que mix it does the jobb really good.

And the multi OHM option is pretty handy so the attenuator suits all guitar amps.