I live in a house divided into three apartments. My neighbors are usually cool, but I am very conscientious of respecting our private lives, including not imposing/forcing the sounds we like on others. But the one neighbor occasionally plays some modern bass kickin heavy metal, which sounds pretty ill from my vantage point, and so it is usually not a very likeable situation, so I don't want to encourage him in the wrong direction. So basically, I'm in your shoes with thin walls.
I totally agree with the idea that lower volumes are not nearly as good sounding as higher volumes. You simply can not change the sonic facts of life. It just does not sound as good at quiet levels as it does when cranked up. I just want to get the best sound possible at bedroom levels. I will also be doing some acoustic room sound isolation so that I can have a little louder volume and yet keep it to myself!
Yes, I am a dirty player, clean is fine now and then, but cranked amp distortion and infinite sustain is where it's at.
I have a piece of crap SS amp. It's something I picked up at (gulp, looking around) ,,, hey now, rememeber, I am a proud owner of a jammingly cool Marshall JCM 800 amp! I picked up a SS bass guitar amp at Walmart, because it was cheap, probably had a more durable speaker than the guitar amp, and probably was able to provide more warmth and lows as well. I have a Digitech RP100, so that was where the distortion crunch was to come from. To my ears, this amp is pretty clean, it does not provide any noticeable distortion, the distortion pedal was mandatory for even modest distortion sounds.
If that does not work out so well, then I suppose I would end up getting either a small PA (monitor amp?), or another (better) SS guitar amp. I am open to suggestions as to what is better. I would use the amp's tone circuitry to become as transparent (linear) as possible. I assume that usually level or moderate settings should provide less sonic shaping/alteration.
I do not have a selection of speakers for low volume playing. (Chuckles) However I do have two loud high power speakers. The 6" and 8" speakers is part of a plan for the future. I have two PA unpowered monitor speaker cabs, and no PA amp, just the elcheapo SS bass amp. When I'm at my drummers place, we use his PA and we play loud.
You said
That other method I use with the THD Yellow Jackets and -12db attenuation works well to but thats still pretty loud.
What is that? If I remember correctly, I saw somewhere, where you can use something like an adapter that allows you do use lower rated power tubes so that you can saturate them, but produce lower volumes. Please explain.
As far as running my Marshall hard, you bring up an interesting point. When you use an amp nearly dimmed all the time, surely that will use up the power tubes much quicker than if you always played at less than half volume or so. And if you max out your amp too much, you stand the risk of burning up the power attenuator and the power or output transformers in your amp. So, here enters the idea of using these tools prudently.
How about this. As long as I keep things sufficiently cool like always use a dedicated positive ventilation fan, and use some moderation with the master volume, perhaps keep it around 7-8.5 or so, then perhaps doing so would yield better results than relying on passive cooling and maxed out settings. I also consider buying a greater rated attenuator (100 watt) so as to help protect that end of the setup as well.
You still dont know how much youll like it. I dont know of anyone whose done it right that didnt like it though. Everyone prefers the amp by itself but I doubt there will ever be a solution that doesnt have at least a tiny bit of compromise.