Comments on trimmers and circuit design

[Gene & Debby Stopp]

Kevin has an excellent point here - if you want the machine to behave in a
repeatable manner then you need to bury the trimpots. For compositional
purposes, externalized trimmers would be great, especially if you were
after atonal effects and atmosphere. But if you need to keep things in
tune, the things that are most commonly assigned to trimpots should
probably be left inside the machine.

I'm thinking here about the example of an analog synthesizer used as a lead
instrument in a live setting, on the road. In this case, not only should
the trimpots be kept away from the panel, but they should also be
religiously tweaked to their "ideal" settings (hopefully on a periodic
basis!).

Both philosophies are totally valid - it just depends on what your goals
are.

- Gene

----------
> From: Synthfool at aol.com
> To: synth-diy at horus.sara.nl
> Subject: Re: Comments on trimmers and circuit design
> Date: Wednesday, July 09, 1997 11:48 PM
> 
> Personally, I like modulars to be as precise as possible. 
> 
> I CAN see your point , but many of us approach synthesis from the theory
and
> scientific aspect though. For a modular programmer, the understanding of
each
> module's theoretical purpose is a strength in knowing how to achieve the
> sounds one wants. 
> 
> For example- If I was to tweek, say an envelope generator's DC offset
trimmer