Blast from my past – John Chapman's Bent Audio TAP-X preamp eventually leveraged Dave Slagle's Intact Audio autoformers for magnetic attenuation in remote-controlled 1dB steps without MFA's or Bespoke's clunky motorized selector knobs. This elegant design introduced me to the virtues of magnetic volume controls which transform voltage cut into current gain to act less lossy at low SPL. It also inspired Pál Nagy of Manchester-based Lifesaver Audio who took up the mantle of remote-switched multi-tapped and crossed Slagleformer preamps with his icOn range. Today those are my preferred poison to add noise-free precision volume control to systems with fixed gain. Whilst I hear how active preamps differ, all of my present systems are curated to not require or want their additive aspects. That makes an AVC aka autoformer volume control the cat's meow. But I'd not be hip to the concept were it not for the original TAP-X which thus mandates a seat on my blast-from-the-past bus.
