Knobs/pots and lead dress

[swinginguitar]

1) when installing knobs on a project last nite, I noticed that there's too much shaft - the knobs sit kinda high off the pedal enclosure. How can I improve this? Thought about spacing the pot off the inside with washers, but that may eat into my interior space. FYI, I'm using the plain old alpha pots and booteek knobs everybody uses/buys from PPP

2) is there a link to a good thread or web page on lead dress and component layout in a pedal? I'm doing a 1590B and would like some best practices and advice on getting it as clean as possible....

[amptramp]

1) Most pot shafts are aluminum and are designed to be cut down.  Some pots are only made in a long shaft style.  A hacksaw or cutoff wheel are your friends.

2) This is a question that may have different answers depending on what you want to accomplish.  Many antique radios from the 1920's such as my 1926 Smith Ultradyne 8-tube radio used rectangular-section wire that was bent in right angles as shown on the following page:

http://www.sparkbench.com/homebrew/Superhet/ultradyne.html

It took a while for people to realize that this was not electrically good as it caused far more circuit coupling and parasitic issues than it was worth.  A modern amateur radio book on the subject is Electronic Construction Practices by Robert Lewis, W8MQU and the Radio Amateur's Handbook also has chapters on good electrical practices, oriented mainly toward RF frequencies, but still with useful information for audio.  And of course, MIL-STD-454 is the military book on how to manufacture electronics so that severe usage (such as being thrown around in a tour van) is addressed when failure is not an option.

[Paul Marossy]

A hacksaw or cutoff wheel are your friends.

Yep!

[arawn]

woot
now i'll know how to solder for the army