Potentiometer soud

[ivanlukic]

Some time ago I noticed that the kind of potentiometer used for audio has profound effect on the quality of sound. In my experience carbon pots sound generally better than conductive plastic types. I came to that conclusion after trying both kinds in passive preamps. If active preamp is excessively bright and crisp it won’t be offended by the conductive plastic pot but more neutral sounding preamps will benefit from the use of carbon. Also, it seems that higher power pots have certain advantages over lower power pots.

The only real problem with carbon is bad tracking. It is difficult to find carbon pots with good tracking that are not very expensive.

Here in Serbia it is absolutely impossible to find dual cermet log pot in appropriate value so I have not tried these but I presume that these could be excellent sounding. It is also impossible to find dual log wirewound pots which also could be very good for audio. I would like to hear reader’s experiences with different kinds of pots.

[sreten]

Hi,

To improve tracking try using a linear pot with ~ 5 times the pot value
you need with a ~ the pot value you need resistor from wiper to ground.

This gives an approximate log taper, with much better tracking than log.

rgds, sreten.

[DF96]

Carbon pots are probably like carbon comp resistors: they introduce a little distortion. Some people prefer this sound.