Define microscopic. If 15 HP at peak and 12 average is microscopic then it is what it is. And that was without much time to do real testing. It was an A-B-A-B test.
Also, I still recommend finding the instructions for that and verify whether it is supposed to have a resistor. Otherwise, he's really flying blind. I'm pretty confident it doesn't require one, but without being 100% sure, I'm not going to recommend one way or the other.
