Clarostat Pots, aka Allesandro branded..

[rooster]

Hi. Here's a question for anyone who can direct me to the right part: Where do I find 1 meg volume pots with 30% audio taper - with the quality of Clarostat?

Anyone? I think I have tried any and everything, now including the Allesandro part which is a 10% taper. Is 10% the max for Clarostat? Did they use to make 30% taper and then stop? Or are you telling me that KF used 10% taper pots? Are you builders using 10% pots and calling it good enough?

Thanks, some answer here would be appreciated. I want to hang with the Clarostat product but I would easily jump ship for a quality pot with 30% audio taper.

Thanks in advance. BTW, there is a lot of junk out there, please don't send me there, I've run that race. CTS is 10%, a good brand in so many ways but this is still the wrong taper.

[gearhead]

I like PECs, they're smoother. Don't know about the audio taper spec, but you could ask the manufacturere at:

http://www.precisionelectronics.com/Request%20Forms.htm

concerning these:

http://www.precisionelectronics.com/Mil ... 0Specs.htm

[skyboltone]

Hi. Here's a question for anyone who can direct me to the right part: Where do I find 1 meg volume pots with 30% audio taper - with the quality of Clarostat?

Anyone? I think I have tried any and everything, now including the Allesandro part which is a 10% taper. Is 10% the max for Clarostat? Did they use to make 30% taper and then stop? Or are you telling me that KF used 10% taper pots? Are you builders using 10% pots and calling it good enough?

Thanks, some answer here would be appreciated. I want to hang with the Clarostat product but I would easily jump ship for a quality pot with 30% audio taper.

Thanks in advance. BTW, there is a lot of junk out there, please don't send me there, I've run that race. CTS is 10%, a good brand in so many ways but this is still the wrong taper.

Alexandro's are PEC. Clarostat are sold by http://westlabs.com/Frames.HTML

I doubt they are 30% and he's an ornery cuss.

[John_P_WI]

Check out Newark.com and search for Clarostat RV4

http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/browse ... t+rv4&Ntx=

Hope this helps.

John

[dave g]

I agree, PECs are quite superior to the Claros.

[gearhead]

Check out Newark.com and search for Clarostat RV4

http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/browse ... t+rv4&Ntx=

Hope this helps.

John

Those are all linear. Been there the hard, expensive, way.

Need to reference a mil-std spec sheet. Convention is the same for all mil-spec suppliers. Contrary to what you would think, RV4xxxxxA is linear, but RV4xxxxxC is log/audio.

http://www.precisionelectronics.com/MIL ... %20RV4.pdf

A=Linear 10% Tolerance
B=Linear 20%
C=Log 10%
D=Log 20%

[John_P_WI]

Gearhead, thanks for clarifying that. I didn't take the time to check the values, I just remember buying cases of the clarostat RV4's from Newark when I did industrial controls.

John

[gearhead]

Just wanted to throw it out there. I've got a set of express-value linear clarostats sitting around cause I thought the "A" stood for audio. Doh!

[rooster]

Thanks for all the help here. I have to agree that not only is Precision a quality potentiometer maker, they are also very responsive to my questions and needs.

One thing I don't understand however, based on the responses here, is why none of you seem too interested in 30% taper audio pots. Why is that? Am I old school? I have always dug how my Fender and Marshall amps 'ramp'up, so to speak, and this is what they used.

Frankly, I was totally surprised to find that the Allesandro pots were 10% taper. To me its seems goofy to have so much gain coming off the back side of the pot.

Are all your builds using 10% taper volume pots? Weber makes an inexpensive 30% taper pot that I have used in some builds, and I have picked some up from other suppliers that were similar. In fact, I think even Alpha has something close to a 30% taper? But here, building a TW, I don't want to use these products. Besides, they are really lacking in so many ways. Typically I will go through a few to find a good one, a slight static noise being the issue and only in some spots - no matter how seriously I clean the carbon traces. Can I just call them crappy?

Well, I am going to pursue this with Precision. If I end up with a small boatload of these pots, I sincerely hope some of you here might be interested in them for your builds...............

[Nigel Tufnel]

I'd pick up a few from you to check em out.

[Lonely Raven]

Ditto. If 30% is what it's supposed to be, I'd like to try some as well.

Maybe it's time to work out a group buy?

[gearhead]

Let me ask some stupid questions. When you say 10 vs 30%, do you mean 10-30% of the total pots value is in the first half of rotation? If not, what does it mean?

If so, then would want to throw a couple of things out there: 1) Volume/distortion comes on pretty fast and furious by using the "default" (10%?) PEC spec, with 12 to 1 Oclock being over the top and 2) most folks set their vol pot at a fixed location and do all controlling from the guitar volume.

Now for tone controls, that might be a diff matter.

[guitarsnguns04]

If you have extra pots Im in for several..

[rooster]

OK, to gearhead goes this answer: At 12 o'clock with a perfect 30% taper, the pot value being 1meg audio, the pot's resistance would be 300K. With 10% taper it would be 100K. Fender's pots at 12 o'clock were typically 500K, or half the value of the pot - and yes - BTW, they were called 30% taper. I personally would prefer 300K more than 500K at 12 o'clock.

As to the volume pots being set to a certain value and the player adjusting his gtr to taste, yes, this is kinda correct when you say the taper doesn't matter. But then, if you DIDN'T turn the volume to '10', a perfect 30% taper pot would spread 700K of pot travel over 1/2 of the remaining pot. With a 10% taper pot, this number would be 900K. Whether you could make any use of it, the 30% taper pot would then perhaps be easier to 'dial in', finding a larger sweet spot on the back side of the pot.

For me, I think there's a good reason why sombody made 30% audio taper pots in the first place. The fact that today many audio taper pots have a 10% taper just escapes my ear. It doesn't feel or sound right to me is what I am saying.

And then on to the tone pots. A 250K audio taper treble pot would be typically 25K at 12 o'clock with 10%, and 75K with a 30%. For me, the latter example is easier to work with, easily. And here, its the treble pot that interests me most. Mids and Bass controls are a different story and I can live with a 10% taper here, FWIW. But if I had the option, I would use the 30% taper on the bass control, too.

guitarsnguns04, I am pursuing this so I will let you know.

[gearhead]

Believe me, I'm very interested to know how this turns out. Not meaning to discourage or malign anything.

What I was getting at with the express volume is that there is vitually no sweet spot on the back turn of the pot. With a 10% taper, if that is PECs default, then almost all knob twiddling is in the first 10%, with a smidgin from 12 oclock to 1. After 1 oclock is useless.

There are some ever slight gradations of over-the-top-ness that are 12 to 1 on the 10%. 30% might very well be useful to dial those in! You'll just never get past 9-10 o'clock on your vol. So long as the user understands that, then that's great.

Of course, this is all my experience, but have heard others set their exprsses at 1 oclock also.