One thing that might have been my habit is I like to go with ultimate option. Not necessarily to be the most expensive, but more on the top quality and near perfection product. Unfortunately, most of top quality product is not cheap.

So at present time, my latest project is the ultimate volume control or to be precised – a stepped attenuator volume control.

Yes, there are several options out there. Like Transformer Volume Control (TVC), premium SMD stepped attenuator (like DACT or Goldpoint), or even just premium potentiometer volume control (TKD, Alps, Noble, and so many others). I have tried a lot of options, and my final conclusion is high quality stepped attenuator, with precision nice sounding resistor (hey, this resistor is simply inside your signal chain), and ladder design to minimize the parts passed by the audio signal.

And the result is Grayhill “semi Military” Stepped Attenuator with 24 Steps and 7 Decks and Texas Components TX2575 “naked” Z-Foil 0.1% Resistor. The resistors are all custom made with custom value to meet my design requirement. Texas Components is used with custom value. So this is not a new thing for them.

All the values are custom. Based on my attenuation design requirement. It’s hard to find such complete value resistor at present time (maybe only Takman, AMRG, or TKD and several few other brands who still have stock for such complete range). So going custom is probably the only option for a perfectionist – like me 😉

 

 

The value could even very random as you can see below: 49.88 KOhm and 39.81 KOhm.

Actually this is the “cheapest” TX2575 line up from Texas Components with 0.1% tolerance.

For the sake of perfection, one still can go with another one or two digits extra accuracy (0.01% and 0.001%). But that means more $$$ must be spent (or transferred) to Texas Components Corporation.

A set of Beyschlag resistor with single value? For what? I will keep the answer for later 🙂

The sample measurement of the Texas Components TX2575 resistor for 100 KOhm value.

Another sample of the measurement for 99.9 KOhm value.

The lowest value that I ordered is 56 Ohm and read at 55.877 Ohm.

The pain job has not yet started – to solder them!