Hey guys, I was lucky enough to score a Tom Scholz R&D Power Soak (PSII) on the 'bay, was hard enough to find one of these in the US but somehow I managed it in Europe.. (Go me! :D)
Anyway, the Power Soak is basically the mother of all designs for tube amp attenuators, it's basically just selectable high wattage wirewound resistors. I have used a Weber MASS before, it had a voice coil as the dummy load and hence was supposed to load the amp more "gracefully" than a purely resistive load, but to me it didn't quite do the trick, so I'm eager to try this unit out, as it's supposed to be quite legendary!
Still waiting on the delivery of the unit, but I'm curious whether anyone has opened one up before? The Power Soak is meant for amps which put out 100-120W RMS. Since my amp is 150W, I suspect replacing the resistors with higher wattage ones would increase the power handling capability of the unit??? Also, I've read stuff about "non-inductive" wire wound resistors, but it doesn't make sense to me since, for a tube amp, having a resistor bank load which pose an almost purely resistive load would be worse than resistors which has some inductance because of the construction method, i.e. for wirewound, which pose a reactive load ? Am I thinking wrong? :confused:
TL;DR - got a Tom Scholz Power Soak PSII, wondering if anyone has opened it up or modded it before
Anyway, the Power Soak is basically the mother of all designs for tube amp attenuators, it's basically just selectable high wattage wirewound resistors. I have used a Weber MASS before, it had a voice coil as the dummy load and hence was supposed to load the amp more "gracefully" than a purely resistive load, but to me it didn't quite do the trick, so I'm eager to try this unit out, as it's supposed to be quite legendary!
Still waiting on the delivery of the unit, but I'm curious whether anyone has opened one up before? The Power Soak is meant for amps which put out 100-120W RMS. Since my amp is 150W, I suspect replacing the resistors with higher wattage ones would increase the power handling capability of the unit??? Also, I've read stuff about "non-inductive" wire wound resistors, but it doesn't make sense to me since, for a tube amp, having a resistor bank load which pose an almost purely resistive load would be worse than resistors which has some inductance because of the construction method, i.e. for wirewound, which pose a reactive load ? Am I thinking wrong? :confused:
TL;DR - got a Tom Scholz Power Soak PSII, wondering if anyone has opened it up or modded it before