Thank you Brad for spelling it out. I expected that someone might need to. And yes, when I use the winking thing it means I think I'm being clever or sly in some way and I want the reader to know it and look for clues. What I was trying to imply was that when the control is all the way down there is no gain hence no watts. Anywhere else on the dial and we don't know how many watts but in the 'no watts' position we can be sure of the output (well, short of a leaky gain pot). So, there is some amount of control of the watts there. And yes, this is not so clever or sly but it did bring the topic up in more detail. Maybe that's helpful to someone.
-drew