Tame your tube amp with Harley Benton’s GA-250 Power Attenuator

Harley Benton GA-250 Power Attenuator
(Image credit: Harley Benton)

Harley Benton has unveiled the GA-250 Power Attenuator. A compact unit with a silent cooling fan, the GA-250 will help you run your tube amp hard while keeping the volume manageable.

Power attenuators can be an invaluable in this game. Sure, we all love our tube amps. Digital technology has come on leaps and bounds with guitar amps but still players can’t let go of the vacuum tube. And yet, to find our amplifier’s sweet spots we’ve got to turn it up. 

That’s not always practical. There are all kinds of attenuators and load boxes on the market, some at eye-watering prices, but for £125, Harley Benton’s GA-250 looks like a tidy piece of kit, capable of handling input power of up to 250W and offering six steps of power reduction, selectable on a rotary dial and ranging from -2dB to -15dB.

Harley Benton GA-250 Power Attenuator

(Image credit: Harley Benton)

At its most extreme -15dB setting, the Fine control comes into play, helping you fine-tune your amp’s response. There’s a switch for selecting between 8- and 16-ohm cabinets, and a warning LED if you are at risk of overloading the unit.

On the back you’ll find a balanced XLR output with ground lift, a line out with adjustable level, speaker output and amp inputs, and the whole thing weighs under 3kg and is available now through Thomann.

See Harley Benton for more details. 

Harley Benton GA-250 Power Attenuator

(Image credit: Harley Benton)
Jonathan Horsley

Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.