Its the obvious DIY approach for many as its relatively easy to do (and also pretty easy to get wrong)
There's ladder resistor pots, and variations on them, transformer volume controls, autotransformer controls, electronic stepper pots.
Some of them can sound good, some of them are more properly called tone controls , and some are terrible.
I tried to get along with some of the more exotic VTC, ATC's but long term they are nothing but trouble.
Like exotic caps, they just sound different, not necesarily better . Its very important to use the right values of pot in a preamp circuit, as just putting anything in can cause serious frequency inaccuracies.
Like wise, impedance matching is critical when using VTC, ATC's.
In my opinion, the best pot is what's been the standard for a very long time- the carbon resistive pot.
I use high quality Alps pots in my preamps, but to be truthful even a cheap carbon pot will always sound pretty good, and I doubt anyone could hear the difference in a double blind test.
The Alps have better channel to channel specs, but its minimal, and any good preamp will have a balance control to enable pin point imaging and sound-staging.
The old faithful carbon pot is transparent, accurate and reliable.
And they can be easily configured for remote operation, which just makes relaxing and listening to good music more enjoyable and fun.
Nothing worse than having shuffle on and the next track 3dB louder than the last, at least with a remote volume its nothing to adjust from listening position.
