How to improve blue alps potentiometer

[Tolu]

Hi

is there a possibility to improve the sound of an blue alps?

I've got a preamp with a blue alps for volume (motorized) and balance. Would it give some audible improvement if I put one or two high-quality resistors in parallel to the pot?
One between wiper and ground (e.g. 100k)
or
one between wiper and ground and one between wiper and input?

[cypher]

Hi Tolu,
I'm using blue Alps 100kR with one parallel one in series resistor. Please have a look at attach schematic.
Please use high quality metal film resistors.
I'm not sure if that will help you, but in my case I have manage to get rid of nasty left/right channel level imbalances heard at very low volume settings..
Regards,
Artur

[ashok]

If the amplifier gain is matched to the source voltage , the difference in channel levels will not be noticed much. Like if a 0 dB level is 2 volts from the source and the power amp sensitivity is say 1 to 1.5 volts for full output, then the volume control would be reasonably high even at low volume levels where the pots probably track reasonably well.
Another method is to use a 20dB mute attenuator so that at very low volume the volume pot is used high up on its track.
Series resistors will always cause HF roll off due to the inevitable capacitance that the amp input / pot / switches have. However if both resistance and capacitance are low , the roll off most times will be out of the audio band.Adding a parallel resistor of reasonable value could swamp the capacitance and take the roll off to a much higher frequency.

[john curl]

We do something like this with both the Parasound JC-2 (with Alps) and CTC Blowtorch (TKD). Seems to create a continuous pathway at very low levels. I know it is impossible to know or believe this, but then we make 'A' products and need every advantage we can get.