[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Scotso

I have never heard a good solution for taming a tube amp. Everything that tames volume to give breakup and lower levels sucks tone in my experience.

I have always found very small wattage with onboard attenuation and a 12" speaker the best solution.

For your consideration (from thetubestore.com website):

JJ EL844 (low power EL84 version) - I used a stock Fender Pro Junior to test these tubes. When switching between tubes no bias adjustments were made. This was a plug and play test and done this way because I figured most people would likely drop them in and see what happens. The EL844 does exactly what the manufacturer claims. You get all the tone of an EL84 with less volume overall. The difference doesn’t end there. Because the tube has less power to give, you end up with very nice distortion at lower volumes. I ran the Pro Jr. up to a point just at the start of audible breakup. With EL84’s, the Fender Pro Jr. was loud and punchy. Switch to the EL844’s and cool stuff starts to happen. At the same settings the distortion was now very nice. The EL844 adds a bit of compression so the distortion was smoother and more focused. These tubes have excellent response to pick attack. With a lighter touch you can get sparkling shimmer, dig in with the pick and you can push the tubes into overdrive. This characteristic is one of the highlights of the tube. I’ve used many amps with a low power switch and even on my own designs I don’t find it really useful or toneful. The JJ EL844 accomplishes the task very nicely. You can now get your AC30 to deliver the tone you want at a volume you can live with. And don’t be mistaken. Any situation that your EL84 equipped amp could tackle should be no problem for the EL844 equipped amp. What you gain is a very sweet overdriven tone that you can control from your guitar and a natural compression that firms up the tone as you dig deeper into overdriven sounds.

Let's see: tames volume (reining in an AC30 is a very strong testimonial in my book), gives both breakup and lower levels without sucking tone, you can control everything from your guitar, and there's no need for either an attenuator or a bias job - um, isn't this exactly what you're looking for...?