L Pad?

[rustylee]

I've had my Fender Hot Rod Deville 212 for a couple of years now.  I've been using the same cables for all of that time.  Well, apparently I had some pretty crappy cables.  I made them myself.  But apparently I SUCK at making guitar cables and patch cables, which is funny because I've made boxes  from Tonepad (Tubescreamer, Rebote2) and they worked the first time.

Nevertheless, I had suspected my cables were crap, so I bought some new ones last weekend.  I play every week at church and my settings are pretty much the same.  I used to set my clean volume to 4, and my gain channel to 2.  Since I've got the new cables, the volume is way too loud at these settings.

The problem is, the volume control goes from nothing to too loud with the smallest movement.  I'd like more control of the volume.

I was reading elsewhere about using an L-Pad on one of the effects-loop cables.  I didn't quite understand how to make one, but it looks like it's not that difficult.

Can anyone provide a short description on how to make one of these?

BTW, I'm not will to do any mods to the circuitry while my amp is still in it's 5-year warranty period.

Thanks.

[Peter Snowberg]

If you want to make an attenuator, it's quite easy.

Grab a little box, two jacks, and a 500K pot. (audio taper)

Wire the input jack ground to the CCW end of the pot and then to the ground of the output jack.

Wire the input jack tip to the CW end of the pot, and wire the output jack tip to the wiper. There you go!

Take care,
-Peter

[rustylee]

I ended up reading more info on this.  Google newsgroups turned up one one article on the very thing (searched l pad deville).  The resistance cited in the post was too much for my liking.  I tested lots of resistor values, keeping the parallel resistor at 1k and changing the series resistor with different values.  100 ohms was just fine.  It gives me the control I need for the volume control.  My volume pedal also seems to swell a lot smoother now.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow with the band.

-Rusty

[Peter Snowberg]

Keep in mind that L-Pad usually refers to this kind of control in-line with a speaker where impedances are very low. If you are cutting the output of a signal line coming from a low impedance output like an opamp, a low value pot will work just fine. If you have a loss of highs at practice, try a larger pot. The value isn't critical if you have enough juice to drive it. The only thing is not to go too low. Not all opamps like to drive really low impedances. Some will fry while others will take it for years- no problem.

It's all a balancing act.

Take care,
-Peter

[jdps150]

Here is a pdf link for the l-pad http://www.freddiefish.homestead.com/files/L-PAD_Mono_Installation.pdf. Be sure to use the one for mono level.