At some point I got a Behringer Eurorack MX802A mixer. My studio had evolved and I now needed to dedicate my Mackie 1202 to mixing things, and I just needed something to mostly act as a volume control between my computer and my monitors and headphones. The MX802A is overkill for channels and takes up more space on my desktop than I would like, but it was the smallest mixer I could find with mostly balanced I/O, and it's cheap, about $80. But you get what you pay for: it's noticeably noisier than the Mackie (and this is a plain old 1202 I'm comparing it to, not even a VLZ or VLZ pro), and the pots were a bit scratchy even when new.
But what really upset me is that the headphone volume control was linked to the main volume, meaning the only way to get sound through the phones was to turn up both the phones volume and the main volume which caused sound to come out the monitors as well since they're plugged into the main output. This is in contrast to the 1202 which has independent main and phones controls and seems like the way to go—if I'm listening on the phones I want to be able to turn the monitors off, either to avoid annoying my family or to avoid bleed from the monitors.
In all fairness, the recent Mackies seem to work the same stupid way. Emails to both companies' tech support departments about why it works this way went unanswered, despite the fact that I am a paying customer of both outfits.
After a week or two I decided I couldn't live with this, and devised the following hack to get independent control of headphones and mains like on my 1202:
Remove 27k resistors R382 and R383. These feed the headphone volume from after the main volume. Glue in two new 27k resistors and connect them as shown in the picture. This feeds the headphone volume from the same low impedance point that feeds main volume. With this hack, the volumes are now in parallel instead of in series.
If you attempt this or any other modification to your equipment and mess it up, that is entirely your responsibility.