Thread: Wanted: Quality Pot! Help!

Potentiometer (POTS) have different resistive curves: EG LOG, Antilog and Linear. That may explain the readings you are seeing. Try a LIN pot if you want an even change of resistance with rotation.


EDIT:

If you are looking to control volume at a low level (Pre Out – AMP in) and you don’t know the impedance of the circuits you are coupling then you could try a value around 10k. Speaker level pots used for low cost “crude” fading or level balance are usually wire-wound and between 4 to 30 ohms.

Originally Posted by Mickz

Potentiometer (POTS) have different resistive curves: EG LOG, Antilog and Linear. That may explain the readings you are seeing. Try a LIN pot if you want an even change of resistance with rotation.


EDIT:

If you are looking to control volume at a low level (Pre Out – AMP in) and you don’t know the impedance of the circuits you are coupling then you could try a value around 10k. Speaker level pots used for low cost “crude” fading or level balance are usually wire-wound and between 4 to 30 ohms.

Thank you for your quick response. I have 3 Pots, two single ganged and one dual. The Dual is 100k from Radio Shack. The only one they carry. I'm currently wired up "mono" on a switched single ganged 10k which works great! Minus being mono.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy8lodKH1FY

In video I'm using the 10k Single Ganged Pot from radio shack and it works great. So I guess 10k would prob be good. I originally picked up a 500k single ganged, but never tried it. Only tried the 100k Dual which didn't work right and the 10k single which works great.

Thanks. That helps out a lot. I just dont wanna spend lots of money on one of these things. The apparent high quality ones are around 25 bucks! So if I spend that much cash, I will require it work lol.

Glad I could help in some way. BTW you don’t have to get an expensive control. The higher cost units may be built a little better but the cost is often in fine linearity and tracking tolerance between gangs. You really won’t notice any slight variations that may be present and even a $5.00 unit should last for years.

Well Besides radio shack I don't really know of any other places local I can get one. Maybe my brother might.

You personally know of anything worth the money? I can go up and down amazon all day long but might as well take some advice first.

Currently the 10k Single ganged pot I'm using works great and can't really tell mono from stereo that much except for songs that usually have 2 different channels.

Units like these would be fine.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...bn%252bb5Cw%3d


http://www.amazon.com/Amico-Linear-R...=dual+Gang+10k

Quality pot... good one. I came in here thinking I was going to delete this whole thread.

Subscribed, interested in this. Good info so far Mickz.

Originally Posted by Tidder

Quality pot... good one.

i don't know what worse-- the fact that i on this thread thinking of the exact subject the thread is about, or that it took me a minute to understand what you were saying...

Yeah...

In general, pots are pots. There are log pots for volume etc, and linear for dimming etc.

Volume pots may deteriorate due to DC current (hence jumps and crackle).


And pots that have step-changes are probably "digital" pots - ie, a rotary switch where it is software that changes the volume by set increments (eg, 1/15th or 1/40th etc for HDs).