When I started in hi-fi I used to make my own stepped attenuators. Off-the-shelf stepped attenuators were as rare as hen's teeth then, and multiway switches with enough switch positions were hard to come by too. I worked out a way to get a 64 way attenuator without a huge cost by having fine and coarse controls.
Of course, these days stepped attenuators are much easier to find. You kids today, you don't know you're born.
Ii remember building a few in the late 90s after the hifi world designs article in the 90s
I managed to acquire a job lot of gold plated Elmer switches, the best one I built used vishay resistors, but I found if I used 2 watt metal film they weren't much different in sound, I also have some Panasonic and alps blue pots too.
Most of my listening is done via adjustable out cd player and the best sound I get is with that straight into the amp, using the CD players volume control.
When those ldr pre amps came out, one did the rounds over on the audio talk forum, many reported ( and I heard ) a brighter sound,
When I tried it on my system, it gave an obvious noticeable grain to the sound.
Nick gorham measured the one that did the rounds and concluded that it was causing distortion.
It was clearly audible on my set up, but it did improve many systems.
Luckily my mate was there with me and we both agreed what we heard, and it's negative effect.