Bad Pot?

[Deep Blue]

I got a 10k audio pot to build an MXR Dist+.  It worked fine when the components were outside of the box - although it always has done this strange thing.  Instead of having pretty much infinity possible locations in its rotation, as most pots do (IE, totally smooth as you turn it) it has about 11.  It jumps from each point to the next.  They're evenly spaced and everything, and it worked perfectly well.

Of course, I had to be a moron, and try to force the pedal, with excess wiring and poor organization, into a b-sized box.  Once I plugged it in, stuff shorted out on other stuff, and I think the pot got fried.  Smoke came out of a jack at one point.

Anyways, is it normal for a pot to turn like that?  Could that have had something to do with the smoking and shorting and whatnot?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I never knew a pot go like that, but sometimes a pot gets kind of squashed & the wiper arm maes irregular contact. Maybe that happened.
pots and people, smoking kills..

[felix jones]

sounds to me like you got a pot with detents, a left/right balance knob on a stereo is a good example. they've often got a center detent, so it's easy to set it to an even mix. it's just that your knob had about eleven detents, instead of one. the older stereo my dad owns has a knob to select between am/fm mono/fm auto/phono/aux 1/aux2. you can also hook up like six speakers at once, so it has another knob to select between various combinations of those speakers. both of those knobs have detents, so it just clicks into place for the selection you want.

anyway, i don't think there was a problem with the pot itself, but i've no idea if it may have caused a problem with the pedal (i don't think it should have, though). i'm totally new to this, haven't even built anything yet.

alex

...jack irons!...

[petemoore]

I had one smoke and glow in a FF type Ez face. It happens. I would say try another pot is the 'best' way to test the pot.  Of course you would probly have to pull it anyway to do any type of definitive test, like with a DMM, I wouldn't trust it if smoke had been coming from it.
 I've never heard of anything else in a SB ckt to cause smoke. Caps explode and I've never heard of resistors doing anything but 'resisting'.
 I've had supply wires smoke too though, the thinn ones I used to use...

[BillyJ]

I saw a sig once that said something about keeping the smoke inside is the trick as it is the smoke that gives the effect (amp...whatever) it's magic.
Sorry I know this didn't help but I wish I knew who sig that was or exactly what it said. It was too funny.
Anyway sorry....

[aron]

Yes, you probably had one of the Mouser pots with detents. Some of my friends like them because you can go back precisely to your last setting. Bummer about the smoke  :?