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A tweak for your faceplate. Most knobs are large and heavy and sit in a sintered bearing which has a lot of play. Most Pots ( not individually switched resistor networks) have spring loaded contacts. The wipers are usually have bent "fingers, which make contact with the conductive paint on the potentiometer wafer.
Because of the nature of the construction, the heavy knob can cause the shaft of the potentiometer to vibrate a little. You will not hear it as obvious distortion as the better pots have multiple fingers and any change in resistance is evened out.
You can reduce the vibration by placing an appropriate sized O ring over the knob and which lightly contacts the faceplate. That way the knob is being damped by the faceplate.
I use the old 3M tube dampers and it makes a significant difference in sound. Regular plumbing o rings sound dull and stifle dynamics. The 3M dampers are no longer available, unfortunately but open up a significant amount of dynamics and detail.
Scotch makes a VHB (very high bond tape) with a clear polyurethane backing similar to the material used in their dampers. I suppose you can cut a strip and use them to make a ring. Some o ring suppliers also make polyurethane rings, although the beauty of the #M product was that you could stretch them out from a 7/8 inch inside diameter to a 4 inch diameter and it would shrink back to original size after removal.
I suppose you could experiment with regular o ring sizes to get the proper tension, but those I tried could not compete with the 3m Stuff,
Follow Ups:
That's interesting.
I'd worry about the potential to mechanically couple faceplate resonances into the pot through the oring.
Could you accomplish mechanical pot damping without the risk of introducing other issues by utilizing a tweak similar to your tonearm tweak in your other post? the one where you wrap some tape on there.
What about tuning the potentiometer resonant frequency? Is this something you also try to tweak? Maybe moving pot assembly resonances further out of band is a game worth playing.
The idea is to prevent the potentiometer shaft from moving as the sintered bearing has considerable amount of play. Works for balance controls and selector switches too. The relatively large knob has a large amount of leverage in that respec
Felt washers between the knob and faceplate work well also. You can adjust the tension by how far the knob is down the shaft. We used to use them on aircraft radios to keep the volume knobs from adjusting themselves due to panel Vib.
Rick
You can reduce the vibration by placing an appropriate sized O ring over the knob . . .
For years, I've used BluTac discretely on and around pot knobs and, more liberally, around the pots. Even if it makes no difference sonically (though I think it does), it's worth trying because it gives the cheapest of pots a silky smoothness that suggests boutique prices . . .
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