MOTM

[mega-snip]
>I'm just stunned. Comments welcome.
>
>Paul S.

That's some way to treat a customer. :-/

Such are the pitfalls of board-mounted pots.

Given this situation, Paul, would you design things differently if 
you were starting over? Say, use a daughterboard for the front panel 
components? Not sure how useful that would be, though.

Roger Arrick's approach is interesting. For those who haven't seen a 
"dotcom" module, the pots (24mm Alpha) are fitted with 3-conductor 
pigtails terminated with small MTA connectors 
(http://www.synthesizers.com/technical.html). PCBs have the 
complimentary MTA connectors on them. This makes it really easy to 
mount and replace pots (which will *need* to be done, some would say, 
since the pots are not sealed on S.com modules). There is the extra 
expense of fitting the pots with pigtails and connectors, but you 
avoid flying wires between the front panel and the PC board. The net 
result: panel-mounted components without soldering any wires to circuit boards.

I'm not suggesting that Paul adopt Roger's approach. More like I'm 
wondering what the MOTM community thinks of it.

Naturally, there's no perfect or best solution -- you just need to 
pick the set of trade-offs that works for you. Cost / convenience / 
reliability / non-obsolescence / etc...
--
john


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