A friend of mine has asked me to investigate putting his Burson Buffer in a nicer chassis along with a remote controlled volume and source selector. There are a few options available for this but the least expensive are the products from China (imagine that).
LITE Audio sells the "V-03" volume control which is a relay based stepped attenuator with 4 inputs and 100 steps. A touch over $100 on eBay or from some of the Chinese DIY sites. I had one of these I picked up in late 2005 and never got around to using, so it was the logical place to start.
With that out of the way, I present, in all it's glory, a nude preamp.
Given that it's not shielded and the PS is right next to the volume board it's surprisingly quiet and sounds quite good. Of course the upside is the SB can run at 100% so there in no potential loss of information (even though the SB does it's volume control starting at 24 bits). Great dynamics, no apparent loss of bass or other information and of course rock solid imaging since it's a stepped attenuator.
If we decide to go ahead with this I'll post photos of the case (they make quite a nice one) and other details.
Mike