Looper pot value problem

[joegarcia]

Hi,
I have built a small bypass looper for an fx unit that isn't designed to work with guitar/bass. The unit has a massive volume boost so I wired in a potentiometer on the return path in the loop. However, the pot I used doesn't make it quiet enough. I'd like it to be able to go from nothing to lots if thats possible. The one I tried was a 470k one. Would maybe a much higher one do? Like 1000 or something?

Thanks,
Joe

[Alien]

Joe, have you grounded the unused end of the pot, or are you just sending the signal through two terminals?

If you feed signal into one end of the track and ground the other, then the wiper will pick up a voltage between full signal level (flat out) and ground (no sound) or anything in between. If you just use one end of the track and the wiper then all you're doing is adding a bit of extra resistance to the output (effectively the input of the following effect/amp stage etc.) which won't do a lot.

470K should be plenty if you do it this way - you'll want a logarithmic (audio taper) pot though, otherwise all the volume change happens at one end of the rotation.

Andy

[joegarcia]

Awesome. No, I wasn't grounding the third taper. Will try that now. Thanks!

[joegarcia]

Fantastic. Just did it and it works perfectly. Thankyou so much. Can't believe how easy that was.

[Alien]

No worries amigo - glad to be of assistance

Andy