Wirewound pots

tardishead · Feb 7, 2008

I had heard people talking about the beauty of wirewound pots.
got the chance today to AB two of the same eq modules one with wirewound pot one with typical carbon type pot. The difference was very noticeable. The pots were wired to a treble shelf circuit. The carbon pot sounded abrasive and harsh - the wirewound pot treble sounded much sweeter and even with the treble on full boost was pretty smooth.

Anyone else out there obsessed with wirewound pots?

gyraf · Feb 7, 2008

The inductance playing up against the circuit? :razz:

rafafredd · Feb 7, 2008

unless you could find non-inductive wire pots... well I don´t even know if there is such a thing. If so, these should be rare.

You could try an AB with a carbon and a conductive plastic pot to be sure it really sounds different in a circuit. I really doubt, but never did this kind of AB myself. I wonder, because people I really respect, I mean "no ******** people" swears there is a heareable difference.

tardishead · Feb 7, 2008

Well the circuit I am talking about is the Neve 1073. I have 2 versions of 1073 eqs. One has a cheap carbon pot for the HF the other has a wirewound.
I always wondered why the unit with the wirewound pot had a sweeter top end. I noticed the difference and changed one eq for a wirewound and then it sounded exactly the same as the other.

Neve actually built them both ways.

The difference is definitely hearable.

So if the inductance is having an effect on the circuit - what is the effect??Does it produce a slight bell type peak at the resonant frequency???????

clintrubber · Feb 8, 2008

[quote author="rafafredd"]unless you could find non-inductive wire pots... well I don´t even know if there is such a thing. If so, these should be rare.[/quote]
Would love to see one as well

There will be low-inductance variations perhaps, but a wire can't help having inductance, around 1 nH per mm length. ... which may not matter for audio in most cases, but it's there.

rafafredd · Feb 8, 2008

The resistors are wounded in a way that non-inductive is possible, it´s very simple for fixed resistance, but I don´t know if they ever achieve this on the pots...