Audio Note™ Handmade
Attenuator Volume Controls

We have been using the Noble AP25 pot and balance controls since I started Audio Innovations in 1984, they were by far the best sounding at the price, the most reliable and solid mechanically, sadly Noble decided to discontinue these excellent potentiometers in late 1997, at which time we bought a huge quantity to allow us time to find a decent replacement and over the years many pots were tried and discarded as not suitable, poor sounding (Alps in particular, but also others) or problematic in other ways, so in 2004 Andy Grove and I agreed that the only real solution was to develop our own and after 4 years in the making I am please to introduce the Audio Note 100kOhm volume and balance controls.

  

There is a real lack of good quality attenuators on the market, almost regardless of price and even less at a reasonable price, so there we are, we have made some ourselves.

These 100kOhm volume controls feature 23 steps with heavily silver plated copper contacts, it is a ladder type with one the main load resistor and one other resistor in circuit on each step using the best possible resistors, a 2 watt Audio Note™ tantalum for the main load and a ½ watt AN tant for each step.

These attenuators are used in the M9Phono pre-amplifier and will be introduced in the M10Line and ONGAKU.