Proud new owner of...

[Heady Jam Fan]

Yea... so just frustrating I guess.

[fulltone1989]

Mesa tubes are awesome though! I run green 6L6's in my Soul-O 45 and they seem great so far. I want to emulate the wattage selector w/ my Soul-O. With the parallel loop and master is this possible?

[Heady Jam Fan]

Yea, I don't have beef with Mesa tubes - the SFDR I had came with them in it and it sounded incredible. They are rebranded from only decent sources, but hand-picked for superior quality (which is fairly common, such as Ruby tubes).

You can't emulate the wattage selector the way you are describing. The wattage selector decreases the efficiency of the power/output section of the amp by actually changing the circuitry, while what your describing is just choking off more preamp amplitude before reaching the power section. In other words, dropping the wattage lets you keep driving the power tubes, while choking the volume down keeps the power tubes from working hard and keeps them clean. The only caveat is choking the volume down after the PI - its possible your MV or fx loop are after the PI, but I don't know. In this case, you would be pushing the PI (which is considered part of the power amp), but not the power tubes - the PI is the first part of the power section to overdrive and contributes a lot of the 'overdriven power amp' tone. Also, I assume your talking about putting a volume pedal in your parallel loop? A parellel loop, rather than the more common series loop, may not be ideal for this - its still passing signal around the loop, in parallel to the loop, then probably has a recovery tube and resistor to recombine the signal (like a mixer), thus you would only be choking/attenuating part of the signal and would less impart on the ultimate volume. Not to mention, when using a parallel loop, you would usually want to use 100% / effect only / killdry effects in the loop, otherwise your effects could be more subtle and your dry signal could end up out of phase.

[Happyorange27]

You are starting to sound like you know what your talking about.  You have great insight Heady.

[Heady Jam Fan]

Lol, thanks Happy - glad I'm convincing whether or not I'm spot on accurate