Considering Building A 5.1 T-Amp, just a few questions

[SnoopKatt]

Hey guys,
I'm looking at buying one of Arjen Helder's 5.1 TA2020 amps for surround sound (Tripath 3 X TA2020 PCB 6 Channel with intergrated SMPS - eBay (item 250660737976 end time Aug-02-10 19:18:20 PDT)), and I have a couple questions.

I was looking for the potentiometers for it, and I saw this listing (ALPS 50K OHMS DUAL. ROTARY POTENTIOMETER - eBay (item 300365499842 end time Aug-06-10 16:55:45 PDT)) for Alps pots, and it seems to be really, really cheap (he told me that he'd be willing to sell 3 of these to me for $18 shipped). I did some research online, and it seems like these are counterfeited a lot. Has anyone here bought these from this seller? Does anyone know if they're real or fake?

The other thing I was wondering about was using multiple sources for this T-amp. If I were to order it, I'd like to add in three or four 6-channel inputs. What solutions would you guys recommend?

Sorry if these are really basic questions; I'm really new to the DIY audio world. I'm excited to get started though; I'm building a set of speakers with my brother and my dad and we're having a blast building them

Thanks!

[fb]

Have you read the ad all the way through? As you say you’re new to DIY…

The ad says it includes a 6 channel pot – the 2 channel pots you are looking at won’t do for a volume control as you need to control all 6 channels simultaneously.

The ad also says you’ll need to swap some caps on it, or pay extra to get them to do it.

Switching 3-4 6 channel inputs could be a difficult matter – you’d likely have to design a fairly complex relay board to do the switching, or implement a simple summing mixer per input channel of amplifier. You’d probably be better off buying an off the shelf home theatre pre-amp. Or even get a full home theatre receiver, and skip the DIY idea all together.

[SnoopKatt]

I read it, but when they said it included a 6 channel pot I thought they meant that 6 channel speaker input attached on the side of the board, but now that you mention it, that makes sense haha.

I can modify the board for those caps, I have a decent amount of soldering experience so it probably won't be too tough, right?

I was worried about the switching problem, but I was thinking of maybe pulling the mechanism from a really old surround sound receiver that doesn't work anymore (so then the parts would be real cheap), but I was also wondering if anyone else here has an alternative method that would work too.

I really would like to do this as a DIY project, as this all seems like real interesting stuff and I would like to get some experience working with electronics.

Thanks for the fast reply and the good advice