Resitor Passive

I will be trying a TVC (S&B 102 MKI), Music Reference Pot-in-a-Box, and my Joule 150MKII driving high impedance and sensitive amps (CAT JL2, Music Ref. RM9MKII). I once had the Placette passive, but inthat case I clearly preferred the Placette Active (no gain stages, just robust buffering for an incredible 10 ohm output).

Just curious, do you know if Jud Barber uses Alps or Noble volume pots in his preamp designs? I thought my Joule had Noble pots, but I can't remember.

I don't know. The Pot-in-a-Box is Noble - same one used in the ARC SP6 back in the old days. Extremely expensive if manufactured to those standards to day, but I have no idea if, and to what extent, this makes a noticeable difference; of course, I have 50 year old ears.

I'm pretty sure that Jud Barber uses a certain Alps pot. In my LA-150 (version II) the manual said "it was not the highest quality, but it did sound the best".

-Jake

I went back and forth with the resistor-based PiaB and the TVC with SB102s and for my ears, in my system I preferred the resistor based volume control - which I was not expecting since the consensus seems to be with the TVCs. While the consensus is in favor of TVC, Roger Modjeski who makes my amp (RM9SE)is clearly in favor of keeping transformers out of the volume control thinking they cause more problems than they solve. I suspect that in the right combination, simple, high-quality attenuators provide a purer connection to the source.