Two Notes Torpedo Captor 8 Ohms

Fantastic attenuator

The dynamic load inside does its job very well. Does not color your power amp output. The on-board speaker sim is not amazing, but it can help you out in a pinch. Line out can be fed into your favorite impulse loader.

Unleash Your Tone: The Two Notes Torpedo Captor 8 Ohms

The Two Notes Torpedo Captor 8 Ohms is a must-have for guitarists, whether in the studio or on stage. Its reactive load technology maintains your tube amp's authentic feel, while its transparent attenuation preserves your tone's integrity even at high volumes, unlike other load boxes. Plus, its balanced output ensures studio-quality recordings. It's essential gear for achieving professional sound without compromise.

Nice compromise

Great device for silent practice with tube amp.

Sound is acceptable with IRs. However, any loadbox is not that good as a real speaker.

Solid Workhorse

This device is a marvel of engineering. It works perfectly 100% of the time.

Due to the nature of how attenuation works in the Captor 8, I would not keep it close to your cab if you are micking it as it can be loud. If you are using it to get your amp tone into your DAW for using with IRs or to reamp (recab?) it should be fine.

Decent loadbox

Any home studio with neighbours or flatmates to take care of will invariably need an attenuator and/or loadbox of some kind. The Torpedo Captor serves this purpose well, although it is not as flexible as some alternatives, in the sense that it comes with a fixed Ohm correspondence and you will need to acquire the exact one for your current needs, without the possibility to adjust the Ohms if you change your amp. Also, the cab sim is OK, but it is not the best, and there is only one cab sim included, so you are stuck with it. This I suspect is to invite you to invest in their separate cab sim box.

A nice detail is the inclusion of Wall of Sound software license, if that is something that would help you decide.

Works great as an attenuator.

I'm using this strictly as an attenuator for my Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 50w. I can't comment on any other feature of this Torpedo. I was a little bit skeptical about a fixed attenuation, maybe the volume would be too low or too high (for playing in an apartment). There was nothing else of the same quality in this price range, so I took a chance and got this.

To me, I run my JCM 2000 DSL volume at 5-6 on the OD channel, and similar on the clean channel. That's where the sweet spot is IMO, and the attenuation is just right, the volume is great. It's loud enough so I have fun playing but it's not too loud at all. It's really perfect for MY PERSONAL SET UP. I can't tell if it "alters" the tone in any way, if it does I can't notice it. It sounds great, feels great and does the job great for me.

Does what it promises

Build quality is like a tank.

Attenuation is not giving too much option but it is enough to play on room level with the cab. However, if you want to crank the amp and play on room levels through your cab then it might not enough for you.

But it is not a deal-breaker as it does not require to connect through a cab. You can use WOS plugin for cab simulations and it does the job well.

The only thing is when I compare CAB sims vs the real CAB, I feel there is a slight gain loss (which makes sense as we are missing physical speaker's drive response and resonance there) but it can be tweaked within the amp.

As summary I think this is a great item for it's purpose and does the job well on recordings through a tube-amp at home.

Simple but effective

does the job well. Pretty sure there are more expensive devices that give the last 5% of tone on top but this is perfectly fine...

Does what it says, built well

There's not much to say about bare-bones attenuators / load boxes, really. I use it as a reactive load, and line out into an impulse response loader.

The Torpedo Captor's load doesn't try to emulate a certain speaker type, which is a good choice, imo. It lacks the ability to increase or decrease attenuation, but for this price that's just a nitpick - depending on your amp, it might not be enough attenuation. Especially considering the next step up is something like the Boss TAE, which would let you customize the load and all that, but for 10x cost too...

Ok for live use but not that great for recording

Works great for live use but for recording it has that hi and low cut filter somehow making it pretty midfocused. So with a midfocused amp like mine it becomes too midrangy and stale. But still a good budget option if you cant afford more expensive ones..