Monitor Attenuator

[Jerry Overstreet]

Is there such a thing as an inline attenuator to control the volume of a monitor without hurting the amp to which it is attached?

I have seen monitor wedges with a built in attenuator, but don't know of anything offhand one could put in line with the speaker.

I want to control a fixed wall mounted monitor's stage mic/vocals volume that sits right next to me on stage. It's just slightly above my head. I just need to bring the volume down to a usable level.

It's an all in one powered mono mains/monitor system with speakers all daisy chained together.

We are trying to avoid pulling the speaker down and using a floor monitor with an attenuator as these speakers are permanently mounted.

Anyone know of such a thing that is safe yet won't cost a fortune?

I'm looking at this low cost unit here: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... controller
Whaddya think?

[Dave Grafe]

The components to build such a thing exist but to my knowledge there is no product available. Such a device requires an L-Pad and/or a physically large resistor with a heat sink.

In the old days we had bomber jackets to control our monitors, if it's too bright throw the jacket over the highs driver, too muddy cover the speaker cone instead, too loud cover the whole thing, no big deal. Life was simpler back then.

[Mike Auman]

The Behringer Monitor1 you linked to works with powered monitor speakers, where the amp is built into the speaker. Your setup sounds like unpowered speakers, sharing a central amp. So the Behringer won't work. You'll need something like Dave described, which is a speaker load box (power soak, attenuator, etc.) Your cheapest option is a Bugera PS1, which is about $129 and good up to 100 watts. It would cost you that much in parts to build one (I've built similar boxes.) Just plug it in between the amp and speaker, and set the level.

One caution: depending on how the monitors are "daisy chained", a load box might reduce the level of all the monitors downstream from it. You may need to cable your target monitor as the last one in the series, to avoid reducing the level on others as well.

[Jerry Overstreet]

Point taken fellas.