For tube power section saturation your not gonna get distortion per se as much as you will get break up or slightly "overdriven". For sr this should happen around 4-6 on vol. dial depending on how hot your pickups are. With that said, they are LOUD amps although you may not mind it, your sure to piss off someone around. If you want distorition from that amp use a pedal. If you want a attuenater i hear at 2 ohms its not the greatest in terms of sound quality but people use attenuaters wrong. Attenuaters are used to take a little off the top, to make big sounds fit in slighter smaller spaces or with slighter small circumstances...like unmiked. Dont expect to suck all the juice and crank up the attentuter and sound awesome. After 3 clicks on the db reducing scale the sound of the tubes begin to be sucked big time. As far attentuaters go, the most popular are THD hotplate and Dr. Z air brake. THD has more options. Others seem to have more faults. I personally like to use a good overdrive pedal like ts 9 clone i have...blues devil, but NOTHING can replace great tube break up. Also if you worry about yours so much get some ear plugs, i perfer a little deafness so when the gf yells at me i can pretend i didnt hear it and keep walking out the door (where i return later to drunk to finish hearing here :) )