[sdiy] ALPS components durability?

[Tim Parkhurst]

On 11/2/05, JH. <jhaible at debitel.net> wrote:
>
> >I would say that it is VERY rare to use a panel pot continuously. Think
> >about how often you turn a pot in real life. I don't think I've ever been
> in
> >a situation where I've needed to turn a pot 208 times in an hour, much
> less
> >in a minute (think about it: tweak a parameter four times a minute for a
> >FULL HOUR and you've only moved the pot 240 times). If you REALLY need to
> >turn a pot that much, I'd say it's time to make that a voltage-controlled
> >parameter and let an LFO do the work!
>
>
> It's not uncommon that I turn a pot every beat when I make a recording,
> in order breathe life into an otherwise boring sequence. With 140 BPM
> that's ... right, a _lot_ of turns in just a few minutes!
>
> LFOs and Random Voltage sources can help a lot, but sometimes
> nothing beats real time manual treatment of a parameter.
>
> JH.
>
> I agree that rythmic tweaking of a pot can be great fun and yield some
great sounds, but I'll also bet that you don't do that for more than four or
five minutes at a time (and probably not non-stop for an hour). I'm just
saying that the 5,000 to 10,000 cycle life of common pots is more than
adequate in most cases. Of course, pots that are most likely to get tweaked
a lot should probably be long-life units, or at least be easy to get and
easy to replace! ;-)

Tim (easy to get but not easy to replace) Servo
--
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
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