Can anyone comment on ALPHA potentiometers??

Does anybody here used ALPHA reverse pots before.
Specially the 9mm pcb mounted series??
I need to know the quality.
thanks.

there are at least two potentiometer manufacturers named alpha.

Taiwan-alpha is probably the best known and cheapest, decent quality, feel and long-term performance (if treated right) but large tolerances, so for stereo pots you need to select heavily.

edit: I haven't tried their 9mm-series....

Jakob E.

iirc, alpha taiwans pcb mount pots are found in most of todays guitar pedals. I assume that means they can't be horrible...and mouser does stock a huge amount of their product range. One would think if they were low quality they would not be as popular as they are.

Alpha has been kicking around for God knows how many years. I remember it when I was 10-11 and I am almost 50 now. Almost all of the hi-fi audio uses Alpha.

Alpha or Alpha Taiwan Sahib?

Im looking for a good quality 5K or 10K reverse potentiometer.
I found that the normals Alpha taiwan dont track well.
Have any sugestions?

buy a lot and select for tracking...?

If you're talking about a ganged pots
I don't think many of them do track well especially
at the ends , you may want to consider switched resisters
if that's important .
maybe finding larger resister values to put across half
[ to get about the same value ] could smooth it out
or maybe that would undo the taper , good luck

gyraf said:

buy a lot and select for tracking...?

Click to expand...

I tried that with alpha taiwan log pots. didn't work. The tracking is just so god-awfully bad tolerance that even if you match end-to-end resistance and the 10% resistance spot, it'll still be off too much with most of the range. Depends on the application of course. I ended up with 20-24-step rotary switches.

I find piher much much better in this respect, but the feel is crap.

3nity - I have a supply of sfernice dual 10K reverse pots and am very happy with them. Ultimately its obvious that 24 step switches are the best way to go as the laws of physics kick in and make the tolerance issue really kick in at the lower end of the scale. The sfernice do track really well (its the PA11b version) except towards the end of the track - but acceptable for my purposes.

3nity said:

Does anybody here used ALPHA reverse pots before.
Specially the 9mm pcb mounted series??
I need to know the quality.
thanks.

Click to expand...

Do you tried them?
I'm considering to go with them as gain pots for my 312Clone

I can't find any information if they are carbon or conductive plastic...

SV.L said:

Do you tried them?
I'm considering to go with them as gain pots for my 312Clone

I can't find any information if they are carbon or conductive plastic...

Click to expand...

I use (Taiwan) Alpha all the time. Never had any trouble with them. Log and Anti-Log pot tracking is never going to be good so I either use slugged linears or a stepped pot for critical applications.

I used LIN Alphas for the 10dB trim controls discussed here:

https://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=66420.0

Cheers

Ian

80hinhiding said:

I have a bunch of these Alpha (Tawain) pots in my cart. https://ca.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=RV16AF-10-15R1-B25K-LAvirtualkey14860000virtualkey313-1000F-25K

I've only ever used Bourns PDB series for this project and like their smooth torque.  Are Alpha (Tawain) pots similar in build/feel?

A

Click to expand...

A lot of people say that its rotation feel is on par with Alps Japan, only cheaper. Which is why they're very popular in the DIY community.

I like the (Taiwan) Alpha pots.
I Buy and use them all the time.

You got a lot for the price compared with other pots, the quality is more than decent and they have a really nice feeling when rotated

3nity,
I used Alpha 10K reverse Log on my 4x Access 312 mic pres,  I'm really happy with them work great.
I dont have any tracking problem