I finally bit the bullet and ordered a buttload of custom pots

JTEX

JTEX

Well-known member
I just ordered 2000 custom pots straight from the factory in China. It was about 100 times easier, 20 times cheaper, and infinitely more successful (division by zero = infinity) than dealing with my first choice for pots, US-based TT Electronics. Just a few hours from my very first email and the specs are agreed upon, drawing confirmed, order is paid for and in the pipeline.

Before this, I repeatedly tried to contact TT, using their own web form for requesting a quote, ready to order their minimum production run of 840 admittedly really great pots at a very steep US$10 apiece. All I got was lots of friction at best, or no reply at worst. "You have to go through a distributor, we don't sell direct, TT doesn't even have any direct accounts in Canada, bla bla bla...". So why the fork do you even bother having an RFQ form if you don't sell direct? Yeah sure, I'll go through Mouser for almost 1000 units, when they have zero in stock, it's not even a part they commonly carry, and they'd have to place a minimum order just like me and have it drop-shipped from factory to good old me, while squeezing me with their almost unearned commission.

Who would you rather deal with? No wonder we're losing all manufacturing to Asia. They get sh!t done, and with a quickness, and minimal BS.


BTW, anyone need a few hundred 9mm green pots, dual C10k? And/or a few hundred dual C100k? I ordered both. Under a buck a piece in some quantity. Dimensions as below (suitable for guitar mounting). 10mm is about 3/8" :

pot.png
 
I've never sourced anything this fun but your general experience mirrors mine pretty much to a T. The number of times I haven't even heard back from US based suppliers is astonishing when asking for quotes well beyond MOQs. Meanwhile, Chinese companies will bend over backwards to get your business at the smaller scale. I've sourced products timidly asking if they could less than MOQ (usually compromising by asking for far more than I actually need) to be told they could do at times 1/2 or 1/5 of the MOQ listed without issue at the same price. One even came back and told me they couldn't even do the MOQ, but could do the exact number I had wanted to ask for. At a certain point it just becomes a no brainer.
 
I tried. I tried hard to deal with TT. They make great conductive plastic pots. It's almost like they don't want to build them anymore. Just check their worldwide distributor inventory, all pot values combined, in the better quality series. A few tens of thousands, maybe, grand total between all distributors. That's nothing.
 
TT is massive and mainly caters to healthcare, government, and defense. What made you try them verses someone like Alpha USA?
 
The P260 series. Nobody else makes something as good since Clarostat/Honeywell got out. Even their 9mm mini pots are excellent, way above Bourns and anyone else.
 
Yes. I don't see any 12mm or smaller, PCB-mounted, dual gang, conductive plastic pots in their portfolio.
 
I did, but I ordered from a Chinese manufacturer. No conductive plastic element. I don't think anybody but TT (and Bourns) makes square pots targeted at audio applications using conductive plastic wafers. Bourns Pro Audio models are worse than TT, IMO. Conductive plastic lasts at least 10 times longer than carbon film, and also have much lower noise while turning.
 
Ok, Vimex offers all of the options you specified, just not in the same item. And all their items say "custom configurations available". I've seen them being used instead of the alfas in audio more and more lately.
 
JTEX said:
BTW, anyone need a few hundred 9mm green pots, dual C10k? And/or a few hundred dual C100k? I ordered both. Under a buck a piece in some quantity. Dimensions as below (suitable for guitar mounting). 10mm is about 3/8" :
Click to expand...
Cool, I will probably be down for some of the 100k ones, as finding anything non-custom in dual C taper with that bushing format is crazy difficult.
 
Aentons said:
Ok, Vimex offers all of the options you specified, just not in the same item. And all their items say "custom configurations available". I've seen them being used instead of the alfas in audio more and more lately.
Click to expand...
I switched over to Vimex for all my production stuff, they've been great to work with and extremely responsive. Plus their US headquarters is 10 minutes away from my office, so my orders typically get to my door before they even have time to send me the invoice.
 
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