It would be great if you let me know what you think of the sound, because it looks great, but that doesnt really meam much about its sound. And I guess it is a good idea to rather get it from the actual supplier.
I am still curious about a good place to get great condition 5998 tubes that isn't from EBay. I would rather pay a bit more and get a tube that I know will work for a while, or is reliability not a problem for the Tung-sol tube? This question is obviously directed at everyone.
Firstly I will comment of the RN55 Dales they are the only type of resistor I have tried so far that I am unable to tell if they change the sound of the amp through my headphones often using other less expensive resistors you can make out subtle differences/characteristics after fitting or removing them from the signal path.
Comparing my Valab attenuator against the attenuator with RN55's the differences are very subtle and perhaps even subjective but I like what I am hearing (or should that be what I am not hearing) with RN55 the Valab is around $20 and imo is a one of the best value upgrades for the Crack you can get.
The Valab in comparison to the stock pot is increased resolution and clarity and low level listening is balanced. The draw back of fitting the Valab is the amount of steps is limited to 23 so you do not have the fine tuning of the volume level the stock pot or a 36 step attenuator would give.
But If you are running a pc based system and can attenuate the level of the music you listen to with your software volume slider on the media player you use then finding the sweet spot with the Valab's 23 steps should not be a problem.
One of the things to consider is that if fitting a high quality attenuator how much benefit will it give you in your system and is the rest of your system going to limit the perceived performance of the new attenuator.
Something like the Alps blue velvet or Valab is going to bring a noticeable improvement over the stock pot for not much outlay the savings made with going for these less expensive but still very good options is that there will be money left over for say the 5998, film output caps etc .These I suspect in combination will give a greater improvement than just a more expensive attenuator on its own.