Palmer PGA-04 Loadbox

[rooster]

I just purchased one of these used because I need to try it. Hoffman, amongst others, gives it pretty high marks. It's German made and I hope it is not a door stop. I have been trying to demo 4 quads of EL84 tubes in my Rocket/AC30TB build for almost 3 months and I will let you know my results. There's just no way I can blast my amps at high volumes in my house without blasting myself and the neighbors.

Meanwhile, does anybody here have any experience with one? Thanks.

[sonicmojo]

I've got one and have used it to crank my amps into line level to a cheap headphone amp or a powered monitor. I've also got the cheaper PDI-09 passive DI box that I hook to a simple load box (resistors only) that does about the same thing with less controls. My main purpose was just for fun and playing purposes to crank my amps and hear them at low volumes or in silence through headphones or do a little recording with my amps cranked and not have to deal with mics, loud house, etc. For my purposes to that end, they are fun toys. IMO, there is something about these that just kills tone you hear when playing a tube amp through a speaker and actually moving the air between the speaker and your ears. They are what they are and I'm not sure you're going to love it for finding the true nuances you may be searching for on tube comparisons. Maybe you can record with yours and hear the differences by doing an A/B comparison of your recordings. That might be your best bet to hear the differences between your tube sets.

Both my Palmers have been collecting dust for a while since I got a Fryette Power Station (PS-2) which I find more useful for doing low volume playing and it still sounds like a tube amp this way but will also take on a bit of the characteristics of the 6L6 tubes that run in that unit. I got the Fryette mainly because it can handle 200W and I can run my Marshall Major into it and actually play it above "1". There's always a tradeoff I think no matter what you may try.....

Good luck though!

[stephenl]

I've tried a few different volume reduction solutions, I haven't tried the Palmer Devices.
I have a BadCat Unleash that is kind of cool.
Years ago, I bought a FluxTone Celestion Gold that works pretty well. When I bought it, it was $850 - now I think he's asking almost double that.

Personally, I like PowerScaling the best.

[Reeltarded]

I have loaded my amps since the mid eighties.

I have 4 PGA-04s. They are excellent. Don't use the left side controls. Use only the middle. I opened mine up and grounded the left side to never function.

My problem isn't volume; it's channelizing my multi-amp rig through a local mixer with effects bussing to a 2.2kW amplifier and a quad of 4x12s.

I would suggest you buy a small mono power amp.. cheap, and run that power into any cab you have. They don't leave the sound untampered with.. they do a good thing like choosing a static point in the fletcher-munson curve that works really great for guitar at and output volume.. (except headphones.. omg you guys headphones dont reproduce anything good!) The highs are slightly mute and the bass-mids are touched in a fair way.

There is no other way to channelize many amps through outboard gear. Drop a rack delay and reverb after the Palmer and a solid state power amp at the end with any cabinet. That left side emulation stuff is horrible, the center control is reality. They only have that on there because morons need more controls they dont understand.



I don't use the Palmers with 100w amps. They can't take the brutality unless you are using the speaker through. My 60 watt amps even tickle the red light at certain frequencies when I nail a bright harmonic.

Bryan is right about nuances. My situation varies from yours because I am actually playing louder than the amps can go themselves. When you hit 16 12s with 2000 watts speakers moving air is not a problem.

I have two Bad Cat Unleashed things. Both are dead since the class-d chinese amplifiers in them just stopped working about 60 days in. Those are dead loads for amp repair now. (another wink) I find the IEC cables that came with them to be of superior quality to all others I have ever used, so I basically own $850 worth of power cables for other amps and two resistor banks...

Bad Cat stuff.. is.. going.. to .... make... me.. write letters to editors.

[rooster]

Reeltarded... What does this mean? It's a mono device, right?

'Don't use the left side controls. Use only the middle. I opened mine up and grounded the left side to never function.'

[Reeltarded]

That knob in the middle [FULL RANGE] controls an untampered signal other than the attenuation. It has the global eq curve of the device, but none of the tilt or overtly stifled drama that is the control set on the left. I ground the left hand volume control to the circuit so it never accidently through fiddling or vibrations ever, ever, ever comes out. They both work in parallel by default in the stock unit.

The left side is for when your front of house guy has been trying to make it sound great direct on a single amp for an hour with a lackluster player playing creepy sounding gear with a million pedals and he has to go use that hammer to bang out half the dents just to make it not as miserable as the rig is.

In my rig, it's just a continuously variable infinite load box that feels better to the touch that a plain resistor array. Those tungsten bulbs actually do a nice thing!

Best thing to do is hit craigslist for an ancient Rane PE15-17 if you need more tonal control of the attenuated output. Make sure you get the power supply with it. It's a 2hour bummer to have to buy telephone termination stuff and build your own.

[rooster]

Thanks for this explanation, Reeltarded! I understand now. Parallel you say? Hm. I need to experiment with this. The 6K high frequency rolloff feature seems a good idea. Is this also parallel? I have a barcus-berry Matchmmaker DI (active) that has a 4K and above rolloff that has been a big help over the years for harp players mainly. It's speaker thru. Actually I was excited to see the rolloff capability on the Palmer. Do you use this feature?

[Reeltarded]

I only ever use the full range all other controls defeated. I use the low-Z outs to a mixer. All processes other than getting the signal padded to mic level happen in the mixer.

Umm.. that said, the emulation side on the left has things a crazy person could do if they cracked open the internal modules and started soldering. I busted one to see how many licks it would take to get to the center. lol

THREE! Just like a Tootsie Pop..

[rooster]

Alright, I have the unit at the house now. It has had a very rough life. Certainly it has been dropped more than a few times. I'm a bit bummed. However I may be able to salvage it. The passive components, the bulbs, the transformer, and the 3 metal resistors have measurable resistance. (And BTW, my unit is the 100 watt version, not the newer 120 watt one.)

But now a question or two, Reeltarded? (And bear in mind that I am trying to determine if this unit is actually working as it should be since it's been beat up pretty good.) Those three tungsten bulbs, will a fifty watt amp light those up? Brightly? The manual says you may see the light coming from the vented area in the case as the bulbs react, but is that the case for you? I can plug in a chord, turn the gain all the way up on my 50 watt amp and touch the end of the plug. I can light 3 LEDs on the front panel, maybe 4, but I don't see any light coming from the bulbs. Does this seem typical?

Wait... Update: I plugged a Tele in, turned the 50 watt amp to '8' and played some chords and let them ring. I could see a constant orange glow on two of the tungsten bulbs (the two towards the rear of the unit), that went away when I stopped playing. I could repeat this many times. The third tungsten bulb never lit up but it may take 100 watts to get it going? I only played for a few minutes and couldn't sense any real heat from either the resistors or the bulbs..Does this seem typical?

[rooster]

Reeltarded, thanks for your input here. I have since spent a few hours with this today and after reading the manual, I have set the PGA up as they suggest, starting with the controls on the left and then moving to the controls on the right to add a bit of the non-edited signal with the 6K cutoff button engaged. I realize this is counter to what you are doing, but I have to say that this works really well for my needs.

I plugged my tweed Champ into the PGA and then took an unbalanced feed to my Keefer Twin that was plugged into a 2/12 cab. Man, this was an ear opening experience, great guitar tone! Even at low volume (volume 3 on the Keefer gain knob) using no pedals, the amp sounded beautiful. (The Champ was turned to maybe 7 - not even enough output to light up a single LED on the PGA.)

Alright, so it seems that once again I am late to the party with this product. And you have 4 of these things! Wow! And funny, too, I have just scratched the surface of the amp combinations I can try - including the reverse of this setup, plugging the Keefer into the PGA and routing it to the Keefer.

[Reeltarded]

Yep they work great.

Turn the left side volume to ZERO. Use ONLY the middle Full Range. That is as close as it gets to your amp. If you want tone control.. ok.. go ahead and use the left side too. lol

[rooster]

Thanks for your input here, reeltarded!

[sonicmojo]

I will definitely play with mine again based on this discussion. Thanks!

[rooster]

Still experimenting with the PGA-04, today I ran my Express into the PGA-14 (no speaker box/straight load box), no pedals, and then into the Keefer Twin. At volume 11 o'clock on the Express I am easily getting 3 LEDs to light up on the Palmer. Turning the Keefer down to a comfortable (low) level (around 9 o'clock) the Keefer is definitely getting hit hard with the Express signal causing me to keep the volume levels on the PGA very low. I definitely like the left side of the PGA box for this, the right side is very edgy and not usable in this application.

So my thinking right now is, if you are going to load the output of an amp into the PGA and then send that signal to another guitar amp, a 6 watt Champ amp is a much better deal. I think this is just reality - I don't think the PGA was created to plug a high gain amp into it and then tap this signal straight out to another guitar amp. You can do it but it's not easily controlled. (Hm, now that I think about it, I did not try using the MV. Maybe this will improve what I am trying to do. I'll report back tomorrow on this.)

The manual states that the high impedance unbalanced outputs can run (guitar stompboxes?) EXF but I'm not clear on this signal chain after it leaves the EFX. Reeltarded said he runs EFX from these outputs so maybe he can sort this out for me? He also said he is going to a mixer so maybe that's what he does: unbalanced > stompbox > mixer input? I will send an email to Palmer and see what they have to say. I've contacted them and they were very nice and quick to respond to my first email.

All this said, I have not run the balanced DI signal from the Palmer to my DAW yet. Haha, maybe I better give this a go tomorrow, too.