* Unit is in Great Condition as Shown!

The Power Soak was the first commercial product by Tom Scholz. It wasn't named "Rockman": this trademark was introduced only in 1982 at the creation of the headphones amp. The Power Soak is therefore "Tom Scholz's Power Soak".

Though the Power Soak was not the first power attenuation device for guitar amps, it was the first to be 100% reliable, the first to respect the sound of the amp. Most of all, it was the first to include a volume control: the previous devices were only dummy-loads without setting.
The Power Soak must be first connected to the amp. Before doing that, one must set the Power-Soak to the proper impedance with the front panel switch (4, 8 or 16 ohms).

Then one or two cabs (parallel mode) can be connected to the Power Soak outputs: once the Power-Soak is connected to the amp, this amp cannot be damaged, since its powerwill be anyway dissipated by the Power-Soak. Should someone turn his tube amp on before connecting a load to it, the accident will happen: the output transformer will probably blow out!

The Power-Soak is not just a volume pot: it handles up to 100W power (equivalent to a regular light bulb), so using power-designed cables is absolutely necessary: using audio line signal level cables would certainly result in a shortage, blowing the amp out too.

Inside the Power-Soak, what do we have? A network of power resistors, housed in a grill-type enclosure designed to dissipate the heat. In the middle of the resistors network, a rotary selector that configures them for the desired attenuation: from -32dB to 0dB (full power setting). At -32dB, one can even connect the output of the Power-Soak to headphones or to a mixer: the signal level is now low enough for that.

MPN: TS PS
UPC: 962327373925

The old-school tube-amps can sound good, accidentally. As a matter of fact, someone with a brain will easily make the following statements:

These amps were created in a time where the bands had no mixer and no PA. They were thus way too loud for what we do today
The lack of gain of the preamps, and the lack of controls over the power-amp section, obliges the player to crank them up in the hope of getting a good sound
All in all, it's almost impossible to get a good sound of these old amps and to control the volume at the same time

Tom Scholz has recorded the two first albums of Boston with these big, over-powered Marshall stacks, cranked up at 11. Since he's a clever man and knew that his ears are precious for a musician, he designed the Power Soak as a "Volume Control Device", as defined by the US patents 4,143,245, D256,798, 4,363,934 and D270,153. The Power-Soak not only attenuates the power of your amp: it allows a precise control over the global volume of your set-up. In other terms, tweak your sound first, then adjust your volume.

The personal prototypes used by Scholz from 1975 (?) till 1980 allowed the new-born company SR&D to issue its first product, the Power-Soak, in the end of 1980. The first commercial ads appeared in 1981, and were rather product oriented: the Power-Soak is a tool, not a toy, and it really solves a problem for the guitarist.

An updated version of the original Power-Soak, known as "Model II", was issued in the end of 1981: it has an extra switch made to adapt the Power-Soak to the solid-state amps (though its primary target is the tube amps market). The resistors network was tweaked a little, for a more precise attenuation control (?). No audible sonic difference with Model I.

Made in USA!