I need to find slide potentiometers (faders)

Parts Questions
1

Im having huge problems finding slide potentiometers (calling them faders for future reference).

We do have 1 dealer in Sweden that can supply me with faders,

but not the ones i want. The only faders i can get from them are either expensive ALPS

or some cheap (still expensive) 58mm faders.

Im gonna need a quantity 64 faders, 100mm’s, and price is an issue.

I can settle for 60mm faders but i really don’t want to :P.

Also any brand will do.

So i need names of dealers (willing to ship to Sweden), links etc.

I never thought faders would be soo hard to find.

Iv’e tried Ebay and all i find is private sellers with second hand faders.

Very dissapointing Ebay…   :P

edit-

How low can i go on regarding the power rating?

Would 0.1W be sufficient?

Just to be shure, the pots should be Linear right?

2

Wow! No-one answered this in how long?

Anyway. if you’re on eBay, there’s a user named ‘familygate’. they do a lot of Alps faders, including some of the motorized faders.

The non-motorized, 100mm 10k faders are about 4 or 5 British Pounds each.

Power rating isn’t really an issue, as the PIC is simply taking a voltage reading from the pot.

There is virtually no current taken from the fader by the pic.

Therefore the amount of power dissipated by the fader being accross the main power rails is V^2 /R = (5^2)/10000.

So the wattage  :stuck_out_tongue: per fader is 25/10000 = 0.0025 Watts.

Yes, you want linear.

64? What are you building with 64 FADERS??

3

Thanx for answering!

Well i work mostly with Dub music nowadays.

When i mix Dub, i do it live as it is suposed to be.

I record mabye 7-8 takes and then choose the best one.

This is how the big boys used to do it.  :wink:

At those times i need tactile controll of all the channels.

And many times i use up to 64 channels.

I have no need for panning or stuff like that.

So 64 faders is the way to go for me.

Not having this option has been a real pain in the “whooka”.

I might consider 48 faders, 32 is a very low number for me..

This is the way i work when live mixing.

And it would be so nice not having to bring my three existing fader controlers to a gig anymore.

Just 1 :smiley:

then again…im having other thoughts…

We will see how it all turns out in the end.

<EDIT>

When talking about pots and such.

Do i remember this correctly?:

A=Logarithmic

B=Linear

<EDIT>

Ok now im getting confused.

They have many different “Taper” settings.

Wich one is the one i want?

Taper A?

a_taper-asml.jpg
a_taper-asml.jpg324×303 29.3 KB

a_taper-bsml.jpg
a_taper-bsml.jpg324×305 31.8 KB

a_taper-csml.jpg
a_taper-csml.jpg324×311 32.9 KB

4

At those times i need tactile controll of all the channels.

And many times i use up to 64 channels.

I have no need for panning or stuff like that.

So 64 faders is the way to go for me.

Not having this option has been a real pain in the “whooka”.

I might consider 48 faders, 32 is a very low number for me..

This is the way i work when live mixing.

Totally understandable, when mixing, more faders can be good.

Perhaps you could consider a MB LC type box, with motorised faders, or without… whichever is better for you.

With an LC, here’s what I would do…

Say for example you have 7-8 drum parts, all bounced down as stereo feeds, same for bass, others…

Set up a 8 or 16 channel MBLC.

In your DAW software, set up all your Drum tracks next to each other. ie tracks 1-8, or 1-16.

Do the same for all your other tracks. keep them in banks of 8 tracks if you can.

  • ie, If you have (say) an 8-channel LC, pad out your tracks with empty tracks so that you have 8 drum tracks, full or not.

8 bass tracks, etc.

Then assign these tracks to groups, so all your Drum tracks master to a group called “DrumMSTR” or similar.

Do the same with all your other banks of channels, ie BassMSTR, GuitMSTR etc.

Now, you can cycle through groups of 8 drum tracks, 8 bass tracks, etc, so as to adjust levels there, mute the ones you don’t want, etc.

And at the end of your “virtual” desk, you get to your groups, where you control the master level of drums to bass, guitars, etc.

This gives you all the same control, with a few button pushes involved to get from one end to the other, and you won’t need to buy 64 faders…

And it would be so nice not having to bring my three existing fader controlers to a gig anymore.

Just 1 :smiley:

But, do you really want to take a 64 Fader controller to a gig?

That sucker is gonna be big!

When talking about pots and such.

Do i remember this correctly?:

A=Logarithmic

B=Linear

This is correct.  For all applications within MBHP, you want to use Linear or B taper pots/faders.

As for the graphs, I’m just not sure what they are. :-\

5

Suggesting the LC was a good idea.

I’ll have to think about it.

Then again…64 pots is just freakin’ awesome heheh

And of course you want to bring a big ass controller to a gig with 64 pots on.

Why? Cuz it’s coool  ;D

Regarding the pictures.

I was talking to a HongKong dealer from ebay.

Iv’e purchased several items from him in the past, like IC’s, protoboards,

switches, pots etc.

Fair prices! This is why i asked him if he could supply me with pots.

He told me to go to this link (ALPHA pots homepage):

http://www.alphapotentiometers.net/html/pot_selection.html

Choose what i want and send him a price request.

http://www.alphapotentiometers.net/html/16mm_slide_pot_5.html

When chosing the right specifikation, one needs to confirm what kind of taper one wants.

http://www.alphapotentiometers.net/html/taper_curves.html

This is confusing.

6

Suggesting the LC was a good idea.

I’ll have to think about it.

Motorfaders: 64 x ~18€  :stuck_out_tongue:

Greets, Roger

7

here are 8 for warmup  ;D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMvp_xaLq5Q

total price with Knobs 175.- €

*sorry for crossposting

8

here are 8 for warmup  ;D

..

woohoo, coolness!

9

Now that’s cooool!!!  ;D

Anyone got any input about wich line curve i shall choose,

regarding the info i posted above?

10

…Anyone got any input about wich line curve i shall choose,

regarding the info i posted above?

B  (the one that is a straight line)

(note that not all manufacturers use the same letters)

11

B  (the one that is a straight line)

(note that not all manufacturers use the same letters)

Isn’t that just perfect.

I love when they do stuff like that.

Thanx for the tip!

12

64 pots is totally cool.

64 faders would be totally huge…

One long row of 128x16mm faders, even with no spacing makes a metre long board…

But if you did 2, 3 or 4 tiers deep it could be more reasonable.

  • 2 tiers would be (minimum) 256 x 512mm,

  • 3 tiers (total 63 faders) would be 384 x 252mm…

Spacing these would of course make it more user-friendly, at the cost of making a bigger controller.

I think I was just panicking because my LC will have approx. 38mm fader spacing, and with 64 faders this would be a board more than 2.5 metres long. This would be a bit of a pain to take to gigs.

Perhaps you could do a MB64/64e as a combination faders/pots type controller, using (say) 8 faders for group masters (DrumMSTR, BassMSTR in previous example), with a column of up to 7 pots above each fader for mixing drum parts together in each group…?

Looking at those graphs on a better monitor, I wonder if they might be the old ‘fixed-resistor-in-parallel-with-the-pot’ type graphs.

When doing analog audio control, some folks have been known to strap a fixed resistor across two terminals of a pot (one of the terminals being the wiper), in order to modify the pot’s taper.

13

Hi Foona,

If “any brand will do” you can search futurelec, the site doesn’t mention what brand are those but they are cheap so you

can buy some just for trying, 75mm and 30mm travel.

http://www.futurlec.com/PotSliding.shtml

Best regards,

Asaf