passive attenuators?

[Guest]

ive looked around a bunch trying to find stepped attenuators. the one that came up the most was DACT, and i also found a Marchand Electronics piece. is there anything else out there? i was hoping to be able to find a balanced stereo attenuator for more like 200 bucks, rather than 350 that dact is. it seems like the dact ct1 is maybe not available anymore?

 

[CJ]

Davens on evilbay.
Or atten transformer from Sowter.

 

[Guest]

whats that davens thing? is that the item or the seller? i tried searching for both, but nothing came up.

will those sowter trasnformers be as high quality as a good stepped attenuator?

 

[jrmintz]

The Marchand kits are excellent, I've built the 24-position and the 46-postion switches. There's also a company called Gold Point that makes kits and assembled attenuators with Elma switches. They're also cheaper than DACT, I think. I have a couple of those as well and they're very nice.

:thumb: :thumb:

 

[CJ]

Daven is a high quality attenuator.
I forget who is making them now, was it Shalco?

 

[jrmintz]

[quote author="CJ"]Daven is a high quality attenuator.
I forget who is making them now, was it Shalco?[/quote]

Yup!

:thumb: :thumb:

 

[mcs]

What do you need it for?

This small board is a lot ceaper than 350$...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

 

[Guest]

i remember seeing those gold point ones at one time... im going to be building a volume control from my da to monitors. would the ladder configuration be more ideal? what are the main differences between series, ladder, and shunt?

 

[mcs]

The series attenuator uses 24 resistors connected in series. You then use the switch to select a tap.

The ladder attenuator uses 24 2-resistor attenuator stages, and the dual-pole switch then select which attenuator stage should be used.

The shunt attenuator uses one fixed series resistor, and the switch then selects different resistors from the output to ground. This means the input impedance will not be fixed, like it is with the other types.

The difference is the number of resistors the signal has to pass through. In a series attenuator it's 0-24 resistors and in a ladder or shunt attenuator it's 1. The board is posted a photo of if something inbetween with 0-6 resistors.

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

 

[mkruger]

in case anyone's having trouble finding Shalco it's spelled Shallco http://www.shallco.com

i like the way those look!

 

[mkruger]

I searched for Shallco distributors and couldn't find any. Where can I buy these? maybe we can put it in the META.

 

[jrmintz]

I searched for Shallco distributors and couldn't find any. Where can I buy these?

I tried contacting them directly a couple of times and found it very difficult to get any information from them. I'm not sure if they don't care about small purchasers or they're just disorganized, but I could never get a price on anything,

 

[mkruger]

hmm... i'll try and contact them after the holidays.

 

[Emperor-TK]

$99 balanced stepped attenuator in a case with input/output jacks:

http://www.nhtpro.com/2004/products/product_detail.asp?ProductLineID=1&ProductID=6