I'm looking to buy a low wattage guitar amp and being a Marshall kinda guy I'm leaning towards the class 5. Have any of you guys recorded anyone using a small 1 to 5w combo recently and thought wow that sounded great? If so what type was it, ill find one and give it a listen. My Marshall stack is way, way, way too loud for recording at home, my neighbours are sick of hearing take after take crancked to the hilt. So I gotta go small.

What about a Power Soak?

I think you can still pick them up second hand.



Get that '10' sound at any volume.

Check these out......... http://www.tedweber.com/atten.htm

I did see an article on how to make a DIY somewhere once.

Was going to suggest the same thing. These are easy to make if you have a bunch of high-power resistors handy. They are pretty good provided the speaker itself is not contributing substantially to the distortion effect, since driving it at the lower signal level won't produce the same distortion characteristics in the driver.

Check this out.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/geekslutz-forum/24291d1158781918-how-build-power-soak-dummyload.pdf

Here's another one.

http://www.barrys8trackrepair.com/PowerSoak.html

The first one does not include the speaker in any of the legs, so if the speaker is wired in parallel it will change the loading on the amplifier. The second one includes the speaker, but switches resistors in series with the speaker, changing the loading on the amplifier. This can have a significant effect on the amplifier tone due to loading changes through the transformer on the tube output stage. No problems for solid state amps though.

Marshall actually make one!

There's a few on ebay.



Found some schematics though.