PCB Mounting/Breakout Board for 9mm Pots

[pyreweb]

Hello,

I am hoping to build a rack unit which will have 24 different pots, but I would like to keep it to just 1U high, which means that I will be needing to use 9mm pots instead of 16mm ones so that they all fit in. It looks like all the 9mm pots I can find are so small that they are better to mount directly to a PCB instead of soldering to them or using screw connectors. I wondered about making a single large PCB that would mount all 24, but ordering individual PCBs is expensive. I then found these breakout boards (http://www.wavemakers-synth.com/motm/chiclets.html) for 9mm pots, but they do not fit the 9mm Alpha pots mentioned on Tayda or Bitsbox, only those that are much more expensive. I am wondering if anyone know any suppliers of something similar, a small PCB board that would fit a 9mm Alpha pot and make it easier to attach wires to it. Thank you.

[Luke51411]

You could make your own with small pieces of vero, I've done that before.

[pyreweb]

That would be a good solution, the pins on the pots are 2.5mm apart, how wide are the holes on vero spaced please?

[cylens]

it's the same (0.1" / 2.54mm) look over here, on page 11: http://madbeanpedals.com/downloads/BabyBoardGuide.pdf

[pyreweb]

Fantastic! Thank you very much, that will save me a lot of time, money and effort.

[nocentelli]

pyreweb wrote

Hello,

I am hoping to build a rack unit which will have 24 different pots...

What are you making!?

[Muadzin]

I wonder why so many people find soldering wires to pcb mount pots so difficult they're going through all the trouble of ordering/creating mounting boards. I had to solder wires to such pots for industrial purposes. It's dead easy. Apply solder to stripped part of a wire, apply solder to the pin of a pot. Put them together, apply heat, presto! For good measure put some heat shrink over it afterwards.

Personally I trust such solder connections way more then pots with solder lug connections. Way, way, way greater chance of a bad connection or a loose wire. If I were to build pedals commercially using wired pots I'd use pcb mounted pots exclusively.

[pyreweb]

That is an interesting point, I will see how likely I would be to succeed doing that when the pots arrive. I am relatively new to fine soldering, so it may prove beyond my skill level, but I shall consider it, as a superior connection would be desirable.

I did wonder if anybody would ask why I am looking to use so many pots. I am hoping to run three fuzz units in parallel, each with its own EQ, and a mixer to blend them together. It looks like it will be 24 pots in total. My noise gate has the same number in a 1U rack space, and it does not look like they would have all fitted in the space if the 9mm pots were not used.