8 months later, the honeymoon is over

and I still LOOOOOOOOVE this amp.

In spite of the 'design limitations', 'loud volume', and 'lower levels of gain', this amp continues to kick ***, over and over!

I turned it up to 10 on the master for a brief second the other day. The sheer phatness / avalanche of power was rhapsodic! (My wife was shopping at a nearby mall and she felt the floor shake) Well, colour me impressed. This has been a fun half a year and I look forward to many more years and maybe an attenuator in the future!

For now, I plan on getting my 2 x 12 covered in black tolex and I have a matching 1 x 12 'Dyne cab on order!

Good times!

Although school is intensely busy right now, I have plans to record in the near future! Should be awesome!!

Based on the subject, I expected to read that you've given up on the Dyne. I'm happy to find that you still love it! I do, too. I still marvel at the perfection of the tone, and I will never want for volume. Between that and my MR, I have every tone I want.

Yup, it was a bit of a bait and switch.

I think my only real issue I have is the volume. The thing is LOUD! Like you said, the amp will NEVER be unheard.

Maybe I'll look into an attenuator in the future, but I really wish I could try one rather than buying one without knowing what I was getting into. For now, I liquidated some gear I wasn't using and I now have a tan 27" 1 x 12 cab on order which should be really cool! I'm still unsure with my Dual Rec, but I do pull it out whenever I need those REALLY heavy tones. With the Electra Dyne, I think the only real 'pain' is how the amp gets much more 'gainy' as the volume goes up. At around 10 on the master, it wakes up and starts to tear!!! Warts aside, the thing simply has the best tone (for my needs) of any amp I've ever played!

I think you're doing yourself a HUGE disservice by not getting an attenuator. What you will get with the Rock Crusher:

For as much as -12dB to -15dB pretty much the same tone as without. That really gets it to manageable volume.
As you lower the output from there, you lose a little of the bite and transient attack. It sounds smoother, but still gainy. It kind of gets Mark-ish. It drops off a little at a time, it doesn't fall off a cliff.
You can take the volume all the way down to zero.
You can use it as a dummy load with no speaker at all, and it has a line-level recording output.

I never run my Dyne without it now.

=-( I just don't know how I can scrape together $500 on my student budget, but it does sound like a good option.
I have found that in a band mix, the Electra Dyne cooks even with the master at 8:30 but that is too loud for practice, even if it is not a terribly invasive volume level. It is just that at around 9:00 to 10:00, the speakers really start to wake up and give that thumping air moving bass response and the sound really starts to smooth out, the gain thickens, and the amp roars. It is definitely designed to sound best ran at that volume level! What I like about the louder levels is that for whatever reason, Mesa amps get more gainy. I don't think the power section is involved yet at that level, but it still really sounds much better. For instance, you can get a lot of the 'rock' tones out of a Dual Rectifier if you get the master running higher. This gives a much thicker tone when modern mode has the gain set back at 10:00 or 11:00. I know an attenuator is a valuable tool that would greatly expand the useability of an amp but the problem is raising the funds. Just don't know how, as we are living off of student loans for school... =-(