JoshP wrote:
Hi Everyone, I'm planning to build myself a new headphone preamp, the unit will also incase a revised passive attenuator and input/output selectors.
I'm getting a little fat and lazy as the years crack on and am getting tired of standing up and walking across the room every time i need to make a volume adjustment.
I've always used a stepped attenuator using an Elma rotary switch as it was a reasonably affordable way of doing things.
I'm not really into the idea of spending around £400 on one of the kits for the relay controlled stepped attenuator, so am considering the idea of doing the dirty and using a motorised pot (Alps Blue or TDK 2CP) as all in with the motorised pot and controller it can be done for around £150.
What I'm wandering is, is a good quality pot really that bad? how much of a notable difference would I get compared to the stepped attenuator?
For reference it'll be sitting between a Forewatt preamp build and either my KT88 Oddblock builds or the new headphone preamp (Bruce's design).
cheers
Josh
You could look at doing something like this!
https://www.waste.org/~knobs/arduino_remote_stereo_volume_control.htmlMight not be pretty, but you could implement it in some sort of way that's visually appealing to you, and I suppose depending on what kind of stepper motor and belts you use you could potentially adjust a stepped attenuator.
I built one of these and put it in a little black hammond enclosure that sits beside the preamp chassis, and uses GT2 belts and pulleys to adjust the volume. It looks a bit weird, but I like it, and it works great.
Here's a pic.. Sorry for the low quality of the picture.
