As I said - the “smart” Rohde & Schwarz EU-6201 is virtually immune form any signal overload at list I was not able to found the station what need attenuation. The gloriously sounding Sansui SU-X1 had much more stupid frond end and this beast need to be fed with very precise antenna signal (read on the Sansui’s thread why).

I have been using the regular 75R 20db attenuator that did what I need perfectly fine. However, with the insulting SU-X1’s sensitively in some cases I need 22 dB -23dB and I used the fixed coax attenuators in series with the signal – kind of continent. To find and attenuator more then 20db with nice and soft turning is difficult. After looking for a while I found an old Marconi Instruments. It is enormously big but it is fixed 75R and it is 100dB step-attenuator with very nice and soft switching between the steps. Alleluia!

So, why to be so excited about the damn attenuator from a junk yard? Well, if somebody come to me and would tell me about it would not believe and would call it BS. However, it is what I personally experience – with this step Marconi attenuation I have better, more continue and less unpleasant noise texture.

This fact sound ridicules but it is what it is.  If to look at the texture of the FM noise under a virtual microscope then the nose noise attenuated by the regular continues attenuator (on the left, magneted to the stand) sounds like boiled bubbles but the noise attenuated by the steped Marconi sound flat and continue with no change of texture in time. Well cool discovery indeed