Jim Sanders Tube Cube 160w Dual Output - Tube Amp Attenuator

Simple to use, directions are straight forward.

This compares very favorably to a Dr. Z Airbrake ... which costs twice as much. The sound does compress more once you get past the 4rth attenuation setting, but you can adjust your amp tone controls to make up for this. A solid unit, that really does the job taming an amp that just needs to be cranked up.

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Jim will communicate directly with you, no problems contacting him or getting responses.

A Dr. Z Airbrake is really an 8ohm unit. It works with any output, but it does not work the same for an 16ohm cab as it does an 8ohm. In fact, the settings only work half as well if you use the Airbrake on a 16 ohm cab. You can take the unit apart and readjust the settings if need be ...

The TubeCube allows you to change the ohms setting .... and therefore it will match your cab better, and the attenuation settings will work as they should. The Airbrake is a great product, but the TubeCube is a bargain that performs equally as well, and better matches your amp/speaker cab output.

Good instructions included, inputs/outputs clearly marked, easy to change the ohms ... pretty simple.

I am not going to critique attentuators themselves, which carry with them advantages and disadvanteges by design. What I will do is compare this unit to both a THD Hotplate and a Dr. Z Airbrake. As far as sound quality, the unit works extremely well clicked down 3 settings. At the 4rth click and beyond there will be a bit more compression added into the extreme high and lows, which can be compensated for by adding presence and resetting the mids and treble a bit. Lowering the gain knob of a high gain amp also compensates for this. Compared to the Hotplate, the TubeCube is much more transparent at mid to extreme settings. However this works very similar to the Dr. Z Airbrake. The tone and results mimic the two Airbrake units I have owned and gigged with ... which is a great thing considering the Tube Cube cost half as much as an Airbrake.

Looks fairly solid, have not had it long enough to tell.

Jim answers Emails very fast.

Here is the deal; this unit compares very favorably with a Dr. Z Airbrake, and is better tonally than a THD Hotplate. I like the attenuators that do not require separate power, it is easier for me at gigs. This unit has one HUGE advantage over the Airbrake, and that is the ability to match the ohms of the the amp output/speaker cab. Although technically the Airbrake works with any amp output, and the attenuator settings can be internally adjusted, it works only HALF as well with a 16 ohm cab as with an 8 ohm cab. Yes, that is right ... you can read about this from postings by Randal Aiken, electronics guru and maker of his own amplifier line. So those of us with 16 ohms cabs will get immediately better results using the Tube Cube. For this price, you really can not go wrong, and the unit works just as advertised.

This is a very simple product to use.
In it's most basic configuration, the amps speaker cable goes to the IN, and using the supplied, very heavy duty, short cable, the cable goes from the out to the speaker jack on the amp.

I've gone back to a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. An amp I've had a love-hate relationship with for a few years now. Until now, unless I was in a large room or playing live, the hot rod was just too loud and impossible to get tube saturation, which is the reason you buy a tube amp in the first place.
I mostly use an Ibanez Prestige, RGA 321 FS. This is a dual humbucker guitar, I installed a Dimarzio Tone Zone at the bridge and a Virtual Hot PAF in the neck position.
I can finally get the sounds of Al Dimeola, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and John Petrucci, and these guys are all about TONE!
To me, using the tube cube is like having a true master volume control.
The bad:even at the lowest attenuation setting(I was expecting this to be the OFF position, I still get a very slight Overdriven sound.
It sounds good, but the Shimery Fender clean sound is not quite the same, good for most of us, the country crowd may want their Strats and Tele's to have that clean twang come through without any OD.
The Good:being able to crank up the volume, on clean or overdrive is the Best! I have a Boss ME-50 effects board, I love the thing, but...like others have said, now I hardly ever hook it up. The sounds are all available just from the amp, using different levels of attenuation.
Does this product color or add/subtract from the sound?
Between all of my playing friends and me, we've compared this to the THD Hotplate, the Ultimate Attenuator and the Weber MASS.
This little box sounds at least as good as the THD and easily holds it's own against the very expensive Ultimate. I have a Celestion Vintage 30 in my HRD and the sound is great, I can't say enough good things about this product.
At the last setting(most attenuation), I loose a little sound quality, but this is like a bedroom, middle of the night setting.
So, without the tube cube, this volume level isn't even possible, it doesn't sound bad, and since when can you get any kind of good sound from a tube amp at such low volume settings?
I love this thing, I'm giving it a 9 only because, nothing is perfect and some might want a setting that is like a total bypass, for the clean sound.

Is it built well?
This is the 3rd version, I never tried the first two.
This one is built like a tank, nothing to worry about breaking, on heavy duty knob on the top with detents for the varying levels of attenuation.
Also a nice heavy duty handle, seems to be billet aluminum, for me this alone sets it apart from the other brands.
Easy to carry around.
The supplied 3-foot cable is very heavy duty, and the connectors on the cable are huge!
All of the attenuators recommend a heavy duty "speaker" cable, and not to use Guitar/amp cable. I tried a short guitar cable and I could hear a loss of bass frequencies and didn't get that really full sound.
Very well built.
NO backup needed here.

When I first heard of the Tube Cube, I had so many questions.
Jim Sanders never seemed to tire of me hounding him and even to the point of comparing this unit to the other, more well-known units. He was very honest, never claimed to build a better unit, Jim just said to give it a risk-free trial, and told me that with an attenuator, it's all about how you want your amp to sound, and it sounds good.
Since I've been using this, Jim still will get back to me with any questions the same day.
The best part, Jim offers a money back guarantee, no questions asked.
You can't go wrong giving this a try, if you don't like it, and you will, just put it back in the box and send it back for a full refund.
Try that with the other brands, by the time you buy one to try it out, if you aren't happy with it, you will most likely sell it on Ebay.

I play classic rock, progressive metal, love playing blues.
I've been playing since I was 12 and I'm 54 now.
If this were stolen, I have to say that I'd order another one, right away.
See above for comparison with other attenuators.
I love the ease of use and finally being able to get real tube saturated sound, at almost any volume.
I own a Gretsch hollow boy, 3 strats, a Les Paul classic, a Dean.
Boss Me-50, tube screamer, Tu-2 in line tuner.

Piece o' cake. Set the ohm switch to your amp's optimal output (8, 12, 16, and 20 - ever seen a 20-ohm output on a guitar amp?), plug the speaker out of the amp into the clearly labeled "input", then run as many speaker cabs of any ohmage (!!) into the outputs of the Tube Cube. Adjust the big metal attenuation knob to suit your needs.

Excellent. I don't know what the fellow below was doing, but mine sounds great. No, you cannot attenuate a 60 watt head and a 4 X 12" cab down to whisper-quiet levels without creating some ugliness; the speakers will not move, and frazz will ensue. But - you can knock it down from ear-bleeding loud to merely quite loud. No added noise from my unit.

Cranking the power tubes up does change the amp's response. Some people may not like it. Increased compression, decreased apparent headroom. Boost pedals cease to have much of an effect on volume. I guess that minor increases to the input stages of the preamp lose effect on the output. I'm no electrical engineer, but this makes sense.

Radical changes in my effects chain. After several hours of experimentation, it is clear that I can lose 2 out of 3 distortion and boost pedals.

Here was my pre-attenuator setup:
Humbuckers > Teese Wizard Wah > Analogman CompRosser > Analogman Sun Face > Purple Phase > Korg Pitchblack Tuner > Greer Royal Fromage Boost > Greer Claymore > MXR 6-band EQ > HBE Mock 1 Delay > Sovtek Mig-60 amp > Mesa 1/2 back 4 X 12.

Now, to get a better version of the same general tone:
Humbuckers > Teese Wizard Wah > Korg Pitchblack Tuner > Analogman CompRosser > DNA Analogic Purple Phase > Analogman Sun Face > MXR 6-band EQ > HBE Mock 1 Delay > Sovtek Mig-60 amp modded by Lord Valve > Mesa 1/2 back 4 X 12. Love the Greer pedals, but they don't do anything positive with the power tubes sizzling. In fact, they cause an apparent decrease in volume.

The highs are not muted or muddied at all, so long as I don't attenuate things down too low.

Not to be a spaz, but this silver box rules. Gorgeous sustain, better note definition. Maybe those 12-watt amp lovers are on to something, eh?

Added benefit: I can run several speaker cabs, with mis-matched impedences, out of this Cube. How great is that? Side-fill monitor, anyone? No degredation in sound quality with an 8-ohm and a 4-ohm cab pounding away. At tolerable volume.

Too soon to tell. I opened it up, and it is pretty simple. No fan, no power supply, no LEDs. I will submit an update if anything goes wrong.

No idea, and I hope to never find out. They EBay buying experience was excellent - wrapped like pricelss sculpture, shipped immediately.

I play loud hard/punk rock, often in icky little bars. I had a good soundman tell me "You should get an attenuator", so I did. I get it now.

Many years, toured, recorded, yada yada. I occasionally need the oomph of a loud half-stack, but often have to turn it down a bit. The attenuator is a great tool.

Nitpicking: it would be nice to have some markings on the attenuation knob, but tape and a sharpie will fix that. I like the minimal, mad-scientist/toolbox look of this thing. Oh, and importantly, about a third of the price of a Hot Plate or a Marshall Power Brake. Nice work, Jim.

Pro160 with low level output RCA jack.

1/4" jack input and 2 output with RCA low level output.
Came with manual that is easy to follow.
A switch for impedence 8-12-16-20 ohm.
3 feet speaker cable

Sound weird. It colour the sound too much. It even produce a distortion at the second position of the knob.(The db are not indicated on the 12 volume switch.) I used it on my Matchless HC-30 and 2x12" speaker cabinets with Celestion Vintage30s.

I am very disappointed with the sound as it's not a transparent at all, suck up too much tones and produce overdrive/distortion from the 2nd volume onwards. I'm very sure the overdrive/distortion are not from the tubes. The matchless does not distort with volume knob at 8 o'clock.

I did compare this with a THD Hotplate 16ohm which I borrow from a friend. The hotplate does suckup tone at high, but compare to the Pro160 the Hotplate is alot more transparent and usable. I'm talking about low volume here, I didn't even other to go on high volume attenuation. I gave up on the Pro160, it's not usable to me and sound like an overdrive/distortion pedal to me.

I brought the Pro160 after reading the previous owner review. But I'm totally disappointed with the Tubecube. A DIY L-PAD attenuator which I have made with USD25 sounds better than the Tube cube - Pro160 which I cause me nore than USD100.

It's a homemade attenuator, the internal wiring are neat with quality cable, proper shielding and I think this will last forever.

Never have to contact Jim for the support. The manual was good enough.

I play blues/Jazz/Rock. Stolen/lost? I will actually beg someone to have it now actually. I'm not kidding, I'm actually passing it to friends to try and see if it can find an owner who could appreciate it. All I want is an attenuator that does not colour the sound too much but allow me to play my matchless HC-30 at bedroom volume. I'm not expecting it to be as transparent as the THD which cost 3 times the price. But this tube cube is a overdrive/distortion pedal instead attenuating the volume.

Not give it 1 as jucnk since it does the overdrive sound pretty well.

Very simple instructions are included. They're simple because this is very easy to use. There's a 12 step pot for attenuation, and a slider to set the impedance, this version has 8,12,16 & 20ohms and dual outputs to run multiple cabs. You have to check the table shown on the instructions to match impedance (2x = 8ohms in this case) but this is, again, very simple. Crank your amp then adjust the attenuation down until you get the required volume. Sweet...

Right, because of this attenuator I have 86ed ALL distortion/overdrive/fuzz boxes from my pedals. I'm using a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe with Tung Sol 6L6GCs & 12AX7s with a JAN Phillips 5751 as phase inverter. Les Paul Junior into Dunlop Fuzz-Wah (now just a Wah!) to Boss TR-2, TU-2 into amp. I do have a MXR Micro Amp in the effects loop, but need it at full boost to make any difference because the amp is pretty much maxed out already.

Basically, the Tube Cube has allowed me to turn my amp up past 4 for the first time, ever. With the "clean" channel volume set at 10-11 I am getting the most amazing true tube saturation I have ever heard. When I first used it live I was approached after by a producer (of Primal Scream amongst others) asking if I was using "some sort of octave pedal or something" because the sound was just so big. I've changed my setup so much because of the Tube Cube that I really can't comment on it's transparency other than to say that I reckon I've found the express lift to tone heaven. If it colours my tone, so be it, the results are amazing!

The only thing that worries me is blowing something in my amp because it sounds so good running it so hard!

It's a home-made attenuator (I think!), but looking at it you wouldn't be able to tell. Sturdy wire mesh enclosure with plenty of room around the internal components so heat isn't much of an issue, not that 30W is going to generate much. This isn't something you have on the ground and with proper care, I can't see it breaking.

As I said, home-made (sold only on ebay from the looks), but the "man(ufacturer)" is very quick with email replies and isn't too secretive about how it all works.

This will make a good tube amp sound fantastic, but be sure to check out all the fine details 1st - ie impedance, how hard you can run your amp, what sort of tubes you have...

I've had a variety of tube amps over the years and have never, EVER had the opportunity to turn one up enough to get real tube saturation. Not even in a 5000 capacity hall! The Hot Rod Deluxe mightn't be the greatest amp in the world, but with good tubes and one of these, they can be amazing...