What value for stepped attenuator?

[Wardsweb]

I was wondering what is a good value for a passive volume control (stepped attenuator) 10K, 50K, 100K, 250K?

 

[Dan ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

If being used with tube equipment, a higher value is usually preferred (100k), if being used with solid-state equipment, I've found lower values such as 10k work best...IMHO.

 

[Wardsweb]

Perfect answer Celt. You Da Man! :thmbsp:

I'm looking at some on Ebay, saves me from having to solder all those resistors.
Ebay items for sale by kyc111

He's getting the kits from http://www.my3c.net/ in Taiwan
You can see a translated page here: http://www.penguinlovers.net/audio/Attenuator.html

There was a lot of talk about these over on DIYaudio.com

 

[one1speed]

that's very cool. hmmm...

can someone explain why 100k is recommended over 10k for tubes? with my 300bs, i've tried a 100k passive volume control with little luck. yet, a 10k seems to work much better and provid more volume. i can't speak to the fine details, but both seemed to provide plenty of detail and air. thanks!

 

[Mike Stehr]

I bought one a good year ago, 100K. For a pre-amp project.
I've just been using the attenuator itself, however.

This one does "break before it makes". So keep that in mind. I need to address the problem better with mine. I do have a .1 or .01 uF on the outputs, but it still swishes a bit when stepping. I need to work on it.

But compared to a carbon pot I can live with it......

I like it for the 50 bucks I paid for it, I really don't blame you for not wanting to solder all those resistors.

I've always wanted to take one of the nice military attenuators, be it two mono or one stereo ganged attenuator, and rebuild it with high quality high precision resistors.

 

[boyelroy]

I got one of these kyc attenuators last year and while a good value for the money, they definitely sound inferior to my DACT CT2, which, admittedly, costs more than 2X more.

The DACT is noticeably more transparent than the kyc.

 

[Wardsweb]

I love the DACT with it's use of surface mount components, but for what I'm doing, the cost of $180 versus the Ebay KYC $54 was to much.

 

[Wardsweb]

Here it is straight from Taiwan. I'm going to use the shaft extension and coupling so I can mount the attenuator inside the case and have the extension go through the 5/8 MDF. More to come on this build.

 

[luvvinvinyl]

(moving up to the edge of my chair...)


I can't wait to see this one! :thmbsp: