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Need passive aggressive advice

Hello
To scratch an itch of mine I purchased a preowned Placette passive device and now I'm hooked!
Passives are very system dependent as we all know but I'm stoked on what its doing, or should I say, not doing in my Horn/300B system,
Since I can't leave well enough alone, I'm looking at more "modern" passive designs and have narrowed it down to three of them.
1) latest from Tortuga
2) " The Truth" from the Horn Shoppe
3) Axiom with Walker mods
All with remote. A MUST for me.
I'm assuming that they will all surpass the vishay placette in transparency. ASSUMING.

Appreciate any and all suggestions/comments/alternatives.

Thanks for your time

Emil




emil
mikhaelkuz
56 posts
 
That's a very interesting discussion for me, as I now also in this ""passive" dilemma, which made worse by necessety of HT bypass. I am not an Electrical Engineer, but conversation with some passive Pre makers reveals that they may have difficulties of implementing such very simple on the surface feature.
If Freya had a I bypass it already will be in my rack )), I love an ability to switch options and play.
wolf_garcia
6,695 posts
 
What’s a (an) "I bypass?"
mikhaelkuz
56 posts
 
Sorry, HT bypass )) One hand in a sling and typing is difficult ))
larryi
3,982 posts
 

I use to have the Placette active linestage (it had a unity gain buffer that made it active).  I heard it against the passive and I liked the active version more because it sounded more dynamic. 

I've also heard a light dependent resistor-based passive that was operated by remote control.  It was pretty good sounding, although, it was bettered by a tube-based active in a mini shootout conducted by a friend.

The one that has me curious is the remotely controlled autoformer passive made by Dave Slagle.  I like transformer-based passives, but, most have too few volume steps and are not remote controllable.  Slagle's unit has many small steps, remote control and a balance control.  I believe he sells his unit through a company called MyEmia.  I've heard systems he put together for shows that sounded quite good, but, I haven't actually tried one in my system.

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,838 posts
 
I have no experience with passives but don't forget Goldpoint Level Controls. They've been around for a long, long time and they won't break the bank either. They use a stepped attenuator which can be noisy so proceed with caution. 🤔

All the best,
Nonoise
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