MOTM pot decision time!

[Paul Schreiber]

Well, I've spent all day struggling with the MOTM pot decision. So, once again I'm asking for a 'vote'.

Originally, I was going to use the Panasonic vertical pots w/6mm shafts. DigiKey has them. Well, the quality
just is not there. What's the point of spending all your time and $$$ to get a synth with noisy pots???

The reason for vertical pots is the they would solder on the pc board, and the board would be parallel to the
front panel. Standoffs wouls secure the pc board. Nice and easy!

Well, the "World of Pots" is tooled for right angle pots. This is not an issue if you have 1 vertical row on a
panel (ie the way Doepfer does it). But I was planning for 2 vertical rows per panel, with the jacks across the bottom.

I still think ,from an ease-of-building and a reliability standpoint, the pot/switches/etc should solder to the board.
So, what I'm proposing is:

1) use rt. angle pots. Many to choose from (Bourns, Spectrol, etc). Also, you can choose conductive plastic or
cermet (lower noise/drift by 10X!).

2) If I need 2 rows of pots, the 2nd row has a simple pc board + connector to jump the signals over.

So, what does this mean to you folks??? Why, $$$ of course!!

This will be moe expensive for TWO row things, which will be the VCOs, dual EG, dual LFO type of things. How
much more?? Oh, around $20 more.

BUT, the upside is minimal front panel wiring (just the jacks), zero chance for error (unless you put the wrong
pot in the wrong holes), and more pot choices (linear, log, dual gang log, etc......)

I don't think anybody out there wants to hand-wire 120 pots and switches. So, I will plan to do it this
way so we can all have better equipment in the long run.

Paul Schreiber
Synthesis Technology