Originally Posted by: alucard0941Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? That fact that tube amps sound their best when boosted to their max can blow the room up 100 watt head. Or do they use a small 50watt 212 and really crank it.

A lot of the time when recording (depending on the sound they want) pros may use small 15-30 W single speaker amps. It's a lot easier to control the sound on a smaller amp and they're generally a lot easier to mic.

I have a THD Hotplate attentuator for my JCM.

Welcome to Tube Tone 101... haha... here goes...

I'll try to keep this as short as possible... Tubes are different than solid state for a lot of reasons... and you can immediately tell. Especially if you just turn on a tube amp... You'll notice that it take a while for the tubes to really "warm up". Also... the tubes in a 100W amp won't really affect the tone until you really start to crank it up... This is when a lot of current is running throught he tubes... that allows the tubes to better "saturate" the tone. Basically if you buy a tube amp and never crank volume over the 4 mark... you're not getting your moneys worth... That's why most people use attentuators... These run the maximum amount of current through the tubes so that they can fully saturate the tone... while the attentuator allows you to adjust the volume of how loud the amp is. So you can still push your tubes as hard as you want... even if the volume is barely over 1. It gets you the most tone out of your amp at low volumes...