Unusual panel parts

[gstopp at fibermux.com]

     Hi all,
     
     Just got finished designing and testing a state variable filter that 
     runs off of a 9 volt battery and is manually tuned (not voltage 
     controlled). It's real simple and sounds great but it requires a dual 
     pot for the tuning of the frequency. This brought up a question - 
     where do you get dual pots these days? I have many junk drawers so no 
     problem for me, but what advice would I give to other builders?
     
     Here are the possible sources:
     
     1. Buy it new and pay through the nose. One of my local stores will 
     put together any pot you want using their TRW pot component selection. 
     This costs between $5-$10 per unit.
     
     2. Find them surplus. You gotta take what you can find this way.
     
     3. Go to garage sales and buy old stereos.
     
     The garage sale option is a great source not only for dual pots, but 
     for concentric-shaft dual pots and center-tapped pots as well. Not 
     only that but there are even some cool switches, meters, and other 
     panel thingeys to be had. Usually you can use these parts and find 
     your own knobs, but for the dual concentric pots you may have to use 
     the knobs they come with. The center-tapped pots are useful for 
     two-source attenuators like the modulation pots on the Oberheim SEM. 
     Dual concentric pots can be used to save space on fine/course tuning 
     controls for VCO's. Meters can be useful for mic pre-amps. As I sit 
     here and type this I'm looking at a bag of dual concentric 
     center-tapped pots with cool knobs stolen from some junk stereo, 
     wondering what kind of noisemaker I can create with them. (Sick, huh?)
     
     Anyway just a builder's thought for the day.....
     
     - Gene