Athena ML-1 Polyphasor : Any idea what this does?

Well, the only problem is, there were no cables built in to any model I ever saw. Of course, that means that it doubled your cable costs as well. Either this was a version done late in the production run, or a special order, or a do-it-yourself addition. I guess it's a bit like what future anthropologists will say about New York: don't know what it was for, or what it did, but looks interesting!

Thank you Mgottlieb! That makes a lot of sense now, for the rca cables that are "built-in" to these boxes are about 28 ft. long going in, and about 2ft. long coming out on the "amp output" from them. I could see why, in theory, they might be used to "correct" for long runs to an amplifier. As Twl stated, they could be trying to address the same problems the TriPhazer attempts to do. The other gear that came with it all seems to be around 15 years old, and I would estimate the age of the ML-1 to be from the same era.... I appreciate your help!

Sounds like a similar idea to the modern TriPhazer.

I had a bunch of them 15-20 years ago. Different ones were more or less complex, and went in different places in the system. The basic idea, as I remember dimly after all this time, was that higher frequencies tend to travel through cable more quickly than lower ones, and consequently can cause an artificially bright electronic sound. What these did, as I recall, was slow the highs in relation to the mids and the mids in relationship to the lows, on some sort of adjustable slope (internal resistors, I guess). The problem was that they weren't cheap, but worked most effectively on cheaper systems. When you put more money into cables and electronics, you made them largely extraneous, and the very people who would pay for such tweaks didn't need them. I'm sure there is more theory to it than this capsule description, but this was my experience.