What's the best way to record a loud amp?

[Stones]

I'm in a situation where I'm unable to crank my amps up, but still want to record. I've been searching around the forum but can't figure out what the best plan of attack is. I have a 5150II (loud fuckers!!) into a VK212 (until I can afford a nicer cab). What do you guys think is the best way to quiet it down a bit? I'm considering building an iso cabinet, but I understand that can introduce some pretty yucky low freqs depending on resonance of the cabinet itself. Other options are an attenuator (how well does this really work?), removing a couple of the valves (I believe this doesn't reduce volume much at all), or getting a dummy load and recording the line out with an impulse (how will this sound compared to actually micing it up?).

Or am I just being unrealistic? Should I just go back to using amp sims and pods? Thanks for the help!

 

[Josh Burgess]

If you can't turn it up to where it needs to be, record DIs and have someone reamp it for you...

 

[lolzgreg]

What Josh said.

Also, don't go ISO box; they never sound right for metal. I've been there and done that. You don't have to turn a 5150 up that loud to get it to sound good. If it sounds good in front of the cabinet, put the microphone on there and call it a day.

 

[Stones]

If you can't turn it up to where it needs to be, record DIs and have someone reamp it for you...

Assume that I'm not going to get anything reamped for the time being... then what would you say about using a dummy load and impulses?

 

[Harry Hughes]

Peavey high gain models and similar amps (the Bugeras) shouldn't really need over about 3-4 on the master volume to sound good anyway.
I can be in the same room as my Bugera 333XL, and as long as I have ear plugs on, it's not that bad.
I got a friend of mine to stand outside my house, and he said he could honestly barely hear the amp at all. If you're turning it up that loud that the whole world can hear it......just turn it down.
Trust when I say today's modern high gain amps are NOWHERE NEAR as loud as the non-master volume amps they had back in the day.