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Boss WAZA Tube Amp Expander Amplifier Attenuator

100W Guitar Amp Companion with FX Loop, Reactive Load Box, Attenuator, Speaker IR Loader, Cab Sims, Onboard FX, MIDI I/O, and USB Audio Interface
34 Write review Item ID: WazaTAE
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100W Tube Amp Companion with FX Loop, Attenuator, IR Loader, USB Interface, and Onboard FX

The BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander endows your cherished vintage tube amps with all the benefits of a modern digital setup. FX loop? Speaker-free reactive loading plus attenuation? Onboard cab sims AND the ability to load your own impulse responses? It's all available in the Waza Tube Amp Expander. Now cranking your Deluxe Reverb to its sweet spot and recording without a mic is possible at comfortable bedroom listening levels. For the stage, the Waza Tube Amp Expander gives you an extra hundred watts of analog Class A/B horsepower to drive an additional cabinet, along with rich onboard stereo FX to really treat that house PA. MIDI control makes the BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander a powerful command center for your MIDI-compatible stomps and footswitches. 10 recallable presets ready the Waza for any amp in your collection.

Related Videos: WAZA Tube Amp Expander Amplifier Attenuator

Modern Control for Vintage Amps

Whether you rock a Plexi head or combo Champ, if you're a tube enthusiast, you're sure to love all the BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander can do for your setup.

Reactive loadbox with XLR outs

A challenge for any gigging guitarist, regardless of experience, is translating the nuanced response of an amp in a room into a microphone and out to your listeners' ears. With the Waza Tube Amp Expander, outputting your signal in glorious hi-fi is as easy as running a cable to FOH. Balanced XLR outputs give players options for mono or stereo outputs.

Onboard cab and mic sims, plus a 4-spot IR loader

Of course, running a direct output from an amp rarely sounds as good as it does filtered through a sweet speaker cabinet. That's why the Waza Tube Amp Expander gives you seven onboard cab emulations and five selectable mic types to virtually manipulate your sound without loss of signal or clarity. One of the Waza Tube Amp Expander's standout features is it allows you store up to four custom speaker impulse responses (IRs) onboard, making this amp companion not just feature packed, but virtually future proof as well.

10 loadable amp presets

Unlike other units on the market, the Waza Tube Amp Expander lets you save and recall settings to instantly pair with 10 of your favorite amps.

100 watts of Class A/B power

If you love driving your AC15 at practice levels but find its cleans a bit bottlenecked for larger stages, the BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander gives you an additional hundred watts of transparent, Class A/B cab fuel to drive an additional speaker cabinet without compromising the tone you love.

10 onboard BOSS effects

With the Waza Tube Amp Expander's onboard stereo reverb, compression, delay, and more, you can leave your pedalboard at home and still enjoy all the trappings of the modern performance platform.

FX loop equipped

Today's players like to run their dirt boxes into the front of their amps and insert time-based effects, such as reverbs and delays, into an effects loop after the preamp stage. The problem for vintage players is, most of our amps don't have native FX loops. The Waza Tube Amp Expander turns the tide by giving your classic amp an FX loop for choosier stomp management and 4-cable floor unit integration.

Powerful MIDI hub

The BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander makes a full-fledged command center for any advanced stomp setup. MIDI in and out lets you control compatible MIDI effects and footswitches, including the BOSS GA-FC and FS series switches.

USB audio out and editing

You can inject premium 32-bit/96kHz audio from your guitar amp directly into your DAW session using the Waza Tube Amp Expander's onboard cab sims and USB connection — no mic or external interface required. This connection doubles a communication port for managing presets within the editor app. Ready your vintage amp for the digital age with the BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander from Sweetwater.

BOSS Waza Tube Amp Expander Features:

  • Endows your vintage tube amps with all the benefits of a modern digital setup
  • Onboard FX loop adds stomp management and 4-cable floor unit integration to any amp
  • Reactive loadbox with stereo balanced outs — delivers your amp tone directly into a PA or recording medium
  • Seven onboard speaker cabinet sims with five virtual microphones
  • Speaker IR (impulse response) loader with four dedicated save slots
  • Adds 100 watts of Class A/B output to your favorite amp setup
  • 10 onboard BOSS effects including stereo reverb, compression, and delay
  • 10 presets to interface with multiple amps in your collection
  • Makes a powerful USB hub for MIDI compatible effects and footswitches
  • USB audio interface injects your amp tone into your session at 32-bit/96kHz quality
  • USB connection for preset management within the editor app
  • Compatible with tube amps up to 150 watts

Additional Media

Guitar Amp Buying Guide

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Tech Specs

  • Power Handling: 150W
  • Impedance: 4/8/16 ohms
  • Attenuation: Variable
  • Ground Lift: Yes
  • Inputs: 1 x 1/4" (powered signal in), 1 x 1/4" (fx return)
  • Outputs: 2 x 1/4" (to speaker), 1 x XLR (mono line), 2 x XLR (L/R line), 1 x 1/4" (fx send)
  • Headphones: 1 x 1/4"
  • Other I/O: 2 x 1/4" (foot control), 1 x 1/4" (amp control), 1 x USB Type B
  • Power Source: Standard IEC AC cable
  • Height: 4.37"
  • Width: 15"
  • Depth: 11.68"
  • Weight: 15 lbs.
  • Manufacturer Part Number: WAZA-TAE

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Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5

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Essential piece of gear

Boss really nailed it with the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander. I purchased it to help me use my faithful 50-watt Marshall Plexi (1987x) at home-friendly volumes and it delivers. I've owned various attenuators and let me say, this unit far surpasses any I've used throughout my long musical career. It's in a totally different league.

Sound is punchy and full of character and delivers up that cranked Marshall magic. I can set the output at any level from silence to pain. It sounds amazing at every level. And there is none of the tone suck I experienced with every other attenuator.

The built-in Reverb and Delay are top notch and super useful. This unit delivers such great tone I usually don't even run a pedalboard anymore. But it handles outboard effects really well too. My deja-vibe, OD and other pedals sound amazing.

Because this unit is so good, I bought another one to use with my 20-watt Marshall. No stronger endorsement that a repeat purchase.
by Bobby from Illinois on

So Far, I'm Totally Impressed!

I've been looking at this thing for about two years. I decided to bite the bullet and pick it up. And it's like the title says! I've used it with my Marshall SV20, Marshall JVM205H, a 1969 Fender Twin Reverb, and a Mesa 525- ALL with top-shelf results! I'm finding the amps all sound just like they would plugged in directly. Maybe a measurement device could tell some difference but those aren't human. I've been inspired with this thing. What kept me from pulling the trigger was the price but I'm glad I bought it. When plugged into a speaker I won't go as far as calling it a "secret weapon" for tone freaks but at the moment I'm believing it's the best investment in tone I've made in a while.

The one thing I'd say that make me just slightly nervous is once I turned the amp on before the TAE. The amp was connected to the TAE and I realized it after a few seconds so there weren't any issues. It needs to always be powered up TAE then the amp.
by Sacalait from South Louisiana on
Music background: Professional Guitarist/Producer/Arranger/Engineer

Just awesome

I had problems setting it to the computer. If you are aswell reset to factory settings and try again. This thing is so awesome. You have to get the program on your computer to use the programs. My amps sound crazy good. Especially my mesa dc5 and marshall 900. Gain to 10 and it sounds so good.
by Steve from Texas on

A Complete Game Changer for Vintage Tube Tone...

Ever think there was a world where you could get all the tone of a Marshall JVM 100 watt head with the preamp volume at 8, master volume at 6, and gain on the orange OD1 channel at 8.5 through a V30 4x12 without the hearing loss or noise complaints? This unit has absolutely blown me away and made all of my gear usable in all settings: The attached photo was taken in my apartment with the amp at the pre-mentioned settings and I can talk over it.

This unit is the highest quality attenuator I've ever used and provides all of the volume reduction with none of the tone suck. My biggest issue with UA's Ox was how you practically lost your bass response at attenuation settings below four, but I'm happy to report the Tube Amp Expander does not have this issue. The added resonance and presence impedance controls are very nice and have a huge impact on your cabinet's response. The built in effects are very high quality and the ability to use this box to add an effects loop to a vintage amplifier is also amazing.

This box is pretty much every good idea Boss ever had with some witchcraft included built into one unit. If you love the sound and headroom of a cranked tube amplifier, but don't love the hearing loss, you will love the Tube Amp Expander.
by Ryan Barker from Charlotte, NC on

Just what I needed for my tiny townhome...

I got this for my AC30 and Deluxe Reverb amps. You can use it as a basic attenuator right out of the box, but to use this device to its full potential you will need a computer running a compatible operating system. It seems Boss is pretty bad at supporting the current versions of MacOS running on Apple Silicon. I wanted to modify my rig load outs and load in some of my personal IR's, but my computer is too new (MacBook Air M2 running MacOS Sanoma 14.1.2), and Boss hasn't provided drivers for it yet. Luckily, I have an old MacBook running Catalina with an Intel i7, and I was able to install the software needed to program the load outs and IRs. Boss needs to figure something out in their software development department.

However, this hardware is incredible. I mostly use this for silently recording my guitar through my very loud amps. I love that I can turn the volume completely off to the speaker, but I can still use the Line Out volume to my audio interface. I loaded in the IR from Celestion that I purchased that matches the Celestion speakers that I have installed in my amps, and the audio sounds spot on.

I use this with my Deluxe Reverb (which doesn't have an effects loop), and I can use the effects loop in the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander. With this feature, I can use my amp to the best of its abilities, but I can also use my UAFX Amp Pedals and bypass the preamp of my Deluxe Reverb. It's like I have a Vox AC30 (UAFX Ruby) channel for my Fender amp now.

Because this WAZA Tube Amp Expander (TAE) has its own 100 watt power class D solid-state amplifier, I installed a Celestion Redback speaker for my Deluxe Reverb because it is a 150 watt speaker. If you try to plug the WAZA TAE into a amp speaker that's only rated for 30 watts, there is a risk that you blow your speaker out, so make sure that what ever amp speaker/cabinet is rated for 100 watts or more.

The built-in effects are very usable. The reverb and delays sound incredible, but if you want to use these effects in a live environment, you will need to get the Boss GA-FC foot switch pedal. I bought the pedal thinking that I would use these effects a lot, but because I needed to modify the effects using the terrible computer software, I prefer to use my own effects pedals. I was also excited about the ability to use the effects loop in parallel with he built-in effects of the Waza TAE, but if you're plugging in digital effects pedals into the effects loop, you will hear that the effects are out of phase. I never could figure out how to fix the phasing issues, other than flipping the effects loop switch back to "Series" mode. I did try running an analog delay in parallel with the digital delay built into the TAE, and I didn't hear any of my audio out of phase.

In conclusion, I bought this instead of the Universal Audio OX Box because it has built-in effects, and adds an effects loop to an amp that doesn't already have one. If these features don't mean anything to you, then you might be happier with an OX Box.
by Paul Sullivan from SAN DIEGO, CA on
Music background: 20+ years playing guitar
See also: Attenuators, Boss, Boss Attenuators & Simulators
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