Joule Electra LA150 MkII or Lamm LL2 Deluxe?

Thanks Rsrex, if I remember from building some voltage dividers a year or so ago, the shunt implementation sends the signal through a single resistor with variable resistance to ground resulting in variable attenuation. Sure enough, I looked it up and found,

Def. Shunt Attenuator - "A device made up of one fixed resistor and many shunting resistors soldered to ground and the means of selecting one shunting resistor at a time."

However, in the case of the Joule, which creates the variable shunt to ground through a pot instead of "many shunting resistors," I am not clear on whether sending the positive signal through that one resistor, and the pot side to ground, actually takes the pot out of play sonically.

What I also don't understand is why the designers don't simply use a stepped attenuator on preamps in the price range of the Joule or Lamm, since the stepped attenuator is generally considered a higher sonic quality device, and especially since Goldpoint or DACT surface mount device (SMD) stepped attenuators are generally quite inexpensive. Oh well, probably a good thing I don't design preamps, I would probably go broke trying to build one I liked. BTW, I cannot believe 67 people have viewed my wanted posting for the LL2, with no offers to sell - what are these folks reading?

A little further poking around led me to the Welborne Labs site, who offer a remote controlled shunt volume control, and they say,
"Extensive listening tests here at the Labs has convinced us that the 'material composition' of the shunt resistance is not nearly as critical as that of the series resistor in the signal path...What IS important, is the shunt resistance must be low noise and linear over a very wide bandwidth to insure an accurate voltage division."
I guess that more or less answers my question.

Some people (myself included) cannot live with the "steps" in a stepped attenuator, esp. if the pre-amp itself is a high gain device. It was always too load or too soft.

Good one Grant.