3 second delay on phase

[frets]

Hi Guys,

I have a guy who is out of state that is using one of my Jimmy Page harnesses. He bought it from me and put it in himself.

He is reporting a 3 second delay when he pulls up on the Phase. In other words, it takes 3 seconds for the phase to enact.

I have never heard of such a thing. In my experience, either it works or not.

Any thoughts?

[Yogi B]

Just to be clear, is the delay only when pulling the switch? That is: does the switch act immediately when pushed back down?

It's very likely a mechanical problem — I'm guessing the pot is one of these:

[frets]

Yogi,

Yes, the pot is a CTS. The signal is regular down, pull up and there is a 3 second delay before the Out-of-Phase enacts. I thought of a mechanical problem with the pot but wanted to make sure that is could not be something else.

[Yogi B]

The internal switching mechanism of those CTS pots is roughly something like this:

That is, in reality, the switch is an entirely separately manufactured component, a momentary push-button switch

The vertical movement of the pot's shaft is transformed to the actuator of the horizontally orientated switch by the angled pieces. When pushing down there is definite contact between those parts, so there's a much better guarantee the switch works correctly in that state. However, when pulling upwards there's no direct pulling action on the switch itself: the only thing that causes it to disengage is the switch's own internal spring. It sounds to me like the switch is gunked up with something (possibly some of the grease from the pot above), and so that spring isn't doing its job properly.

This may have been a problem from the factory, but possibly might also have occurred if the pot body has been soldered to: if the high temperature temporarily liquified the grease, allowing it to leak into places it shouldn't be.

[sumgai]

^^^ Either that, or some rough, unfinished edges that should be smooth where contact is made, that's also a possibility. As with Yogi, I'd bet it barely passed muster at the factory Quality Control station, and was a latent problem just waiting to jump out at some poor user.

Another thing you might try.... ask the user to loosen the mounting nut on the shaft of the pot, and see what happens. Ya never know.....

HTH






sumgaio

[frets]

Thanks guys😸

Yogi, I appreciate the graphic. It make sense.