Designed to compliment THE SILENT SPEAKER or any of the of the other dummy load devices that are currently in use. Substituting an artificial load (dummy load) for the speaker in your amp set up, allows you to crank the amp to high levels of overdrive without offending the sound man, the audience or your ears. The amp/load combination provides a direct out that includes the contribution of the amp's power stage and speaker system. The direct out is usualy fed to a recording board, effects rack or PA board. Finally, to make your sound audible, you will need an external power amplifier and speaker system. THE ATTENUATOR eliminates the need for an external amp/speaker system. THE ATTENUATOR/load combination makes it possible to use the speakers in your combo or head/bottom system. THE ATTENUATOR allows you to ajust the signal developed accross the load to any volume from zero to 90% of full volume and feed it to the speaker system. In keeping with design goal for The SILENT SPEAKER: to build a device that imitates a speaker system accuratelly, THE ATTENUATOR is built around a custom designed tapped transformer. This approach, although expensive and complicated, is the only one that preserves the amplifier speaker interaction.