Hello Ato all,having owned a Audio store and knowing upgrades or modding very well ,many preamps miss the boat at the end the volume control is very important
and using the little round silver alps pot is such a down grade ,it has plastic carbon contacts $20 retail ,you are loosing a Lot of inner,low level detail.a great example
the top prima luna $4500 preamp ,went through all that trouble to put in a lot of nice parts them totally blew at on the outputs , a shunt resistor ladder type NIght and day better, as well as ,relay type ,linear digital type .one ofmy good friends build preamps, look at Don Sachs ,he builds a excellent preamp ,and uses the Excellent Khozmo volume attenuation ,buy with theVishay naked output resistors
on the outputs fantastic resolution ,yes dealers cost $250 but much much better then cheap Alps type. My point is lookfor quality , even the $900 Schiit audio
tube preamp uses a resistor ladder output on the volume.