Short shaft pots...

[rbdl]

I am looking for pots that have a very short shaft, so when they are mounted the top of the shaft is flush with the top of the enclosure requiring a small screw driver to turn it. It would be useful for people who don't want to change their settings once they have found them. I saw a picture of a pedal on here a long time a go with these types of pots, and it looked really cool. Maybe they were trimpots??

[bumblebee]

i dunno what you saw but trim pots and a tiny hole drilled in the enclosure just above the trim will do exactly what you want it to.

[Processaurus]

Like this?


It looks like these aren't panel mount, but I see some that are, mostly the big cts type pots.  I've made some out of alpha pots by hacksawing the shaft short (holding it in a vice upside down, in an attempt not to get metal crap down in the bushing), and then hacksawing a shallow slot in the top.

Its a great idea for when you need consistency from day to day rather than easy tweakability.

[moro]

Yow. That is one of the coolest looking pedals I've ever seen.

[rbdl]

that's the pedal I was thinking of - it looks awesome. That is exactly what I want. They would be too big to be trimpots wouldn't they? I found some pots by clarostat but they require mounting with a nut on top of the enclosure which would ruin the look. I guess it would need to be pcb mount.

[frankclarke]

You could cut the shaft off with a short bit to spare, using a Dremel cuttoff, then notch the shaft with the cuttoff tool, so you can turn it with a coin.
Slotting bolts so you can use a screwdriver to open them is often useful.

[darron]

i'd suggest not using trimpots. they are designed to not get many turns as they are often used in the factory to set and forget. i've been using different brands on breadboard and find that they begin to get crappy and the taper gets destroyed after an average amount of use. if you don't plan on turning them much or don't mind the posibility of replacing them every now and then with hard gigging then i guess it's alright.

the blackstone was the first thing that came to my mind. very cool.

my suggestion would be to use the small metric pcb mount split shaft pots like these:




make a pcb and mount it with some screws, as the blackstone very well may have from looking at the picture. that's your best option i think

[rbdl]

Thanks Darron - I'll have a look for some of these.

[mdh]

There was another thread about this awhile back (http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=46250.0) which yielded this link: http://www.surplussales.com/Potentiometers/PCM-SlotAdj/PCM-SlotAdj-1.html.  I thought I had seen some pots like this in Mouser as well, but I browsed the print catalog last night and couldn't find them.

[darron]

very cool