Your favorite volume control?

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Black Stuart

Member
Joined 2005
ktuuri,
the shunt mod is so simple but like I said make sure your amp has the power to handle the 5/6dB drop. the other excellent point is that it is easy to try as many different resistors as you like, since you only have to solder each time to the pcb, soldering a pin to the pcb makes sense as well.

So anyone putting in an order to Digikey/ca?

Don't get me wrong I love living in France but they brought in this economically crazy 35 hour working week and this more than anything else has ramped up the cost of living.
 
danny_66

danny_66

Member
Joined 2005
Hi Stuart,
My post was in respond to the thread starter.

But a shunt mod is soundwise better than a traditional carbon pot, if you can live with the reduced attenuator range and changing input impedance.
Important note about attenuators: the shunt resistive element is as important as the series, see this post.
So you're better off with a good series and shunt resistive element.
 
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Black Stuart

Member
Joined 2005
danny_66,
thanks for referring to that old thread from 2007. I tried searches to find more info before starting the thread - 'change the pot or what' but got only one response.

I had always thought that there had to be more to this mod than just the resistors used. It has to be simple greed or stupidity that commercial designs ignore the enormous importance of the volume control. How anyone can tolerate the standard Alps Blue or anything similar is beyond me.

I have a Bada hybrid amp that with the shunt mod and changing out the first and second 0.1uF & 1uF signal path caps, Wima MKP10 & Solen , sounds so much better than a KT88 power amp.

The amp receives input from a Talk Audio MC3 phono stage with adjustable loading and o/put settings. The amp comes with a 50K pot. I don't have any space for anything bigger than the Alps pot so I am restricted to what I can use.

Penny & Giles I'm sure are wonderful volume controls but I refuse to spend that kind of money, even if I could fit it.

I'm guessing that a 25K pot maybe going to far. Maybe if I contact Precision Electric Components in Canada they may be able to supply say a 38K pot.

Perhaps I should ask questions on the thread I started, maybe I will get some answers this time - I think a lot of us would like some actual data on pot and resistor values to use, at the moment I'm shooting in the dark.

Once again Danny thanks for inputting that old thread.
 
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Black Stuart

Member
Joined 2005
Everyone will notice that the OP in the thread that Danny pointed up denegrated a mod that he had never tried (pretty sad that) but 2 posts down another member had and always found the sonics improved - that's the kind of real world info I'm glad of.

I did contact PEC in Canada with some questions and suggestions but they could'nt be bothered to reply - that shows a very bad business mentality.
 
Steve Eddy

Steve Eddy

Member
Joined 2002
theaudioguild.com
Black Stuart said:
By using this simple system as long as the pot is even between channels the pot itself does'nt matter because it is shunted out of the way.
Click to expand...

"Shunted out of the way"? Uh, no.

The shunt element in such a scheme is every bit as important as the series element. The signal output from such an arrangement is the result of the current flowing through the shunt element, i.e. the pot.

The shunt attenuator is the result of the sadly misguided notion that the "signal path" is a horizontal line and anything that's "shunt" is "out of the way."

Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth.

se
 
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