This is the problem that I have and will always have with Marshall. In order to get the sound I'm always looking for I have to crank the amp literally to about 75-80%. You can look into the Marshall Power Brake which is an attenuator. It's meant specifically for this purpose....you can crank the head to get the tone/saturation you want without blowing out windows. It really does work well! I used to run my cranked half stack in my old apartment without bothering a soul.

I read some reviews about this product. The Marshall.
Seems like there are 2 or 3 to choose from and some people like one of them but dont like the others.
1) THD---anybody own one?
2) Hughes & Kettner------Which one to buy?
3) Marshall (power brake)---some guys seem to love them others say it changes the sound, tone, whatever and many people are having concerns that they will fry your output transformer.
Im not sure what is safest, and it's not my amp

The Power Brake does change the tone slightly IMO, but it doesn't change it for the worse....also my opinion!

Now-a-days I mainly run a Boogie Single Rectifier because you can get a pretty big sound without pushing 11. The only problem with Boogie is that it sounds like a Boogie, which sounds great, but it has it's own sound entirely...there is no faking another sound. Same goes with Marshall. There are a lot of great amps out there beside Marshall and Boogie, but Marshall and Boogie's sound have their own zip code in the amp world.

I've used a THD hotplate for higher wattage heads (Tophat Emplexador 50w and Fender Tonemaster 100w) as well as a Weber MASS for a lower wattage Fender combo. In my experience, and the experience of many others, is that the more you try to attenuate, the worse the sound/tone becomes. The Hotplate works pretty good for the first one or two notches (I think it goes in 4dB steps), but after that it starts to affect the sound noticeably, making the top end fizzy and generally robbing it of any dynamic flavor. The same is true with the Weber Mass: great little unit for attenuating a little bit, but the more you cut, the more the top end starts to fizzle and create an overall grainy texture.

In light of this, I would say that if your guitar player is close to the drive level that he wants and just needs to turn it up a little bit more to get there, then maybe an attenuator like the Hotplate will work. However, if his volume is only on '1' and he wants to turn up to '8', then you should know that using an attenuator will degrade the tone when being used at such a high setting.

An alternative would be to find a head with a GOOD master volume. I would recommend looking at the TopHat Emplexador if he wants to stick with the Marshall sound. The Master volume works very well and doesn't seem to degrade the tone very much at all compared to other master volume amps. It ain't cheap, but it's worth checking out and demoing at least.

Also, if you have a THD dealer around, you could take the head in and use it with a Hotplate just to get an idea of what it can and can't do. Then you could judge for yourself. Just a thought.