MOTM

> Hello all. I received my Blacet DarkStar kit the
> other day. I was wondering how people are
> mounting this to MOTM panels. I am assuming
> everyone is using off board pots. Any help is greatly
> appreciated. thanks, Charles.

Charles, I am not getting a Dark Star, but the Blacet circuit board pot
spacing really requires off-board pots if you want to stay with the MOTM
standard pot spacing.  You could get "close" by board mounting every other
one and then off board for the in-betweeners.  However, I found the Blacet
board-mount pot shafts just a little too short in the "threads" to go
through the thicker MOTM panels.

I used a MOTM style bracket on both of my Blacet-2-MOTM conversions and
positioned it on the front so as to run the circuit board in the middle as
opposed to one side or the other.  This seemed to work best for me and I
was able to make it so that the holes for mounting the bracket did not
interfere with pots of other front panel graphics.  I had to find places in
the Blacet PC board to (carefully) drill mounting holes that didn't
interfere with anything else.

On the pots that went to the "upper side," I soldered the wires to the PC
board normally.  On the ones that went to the bottom side, I soldered the
wires leaving the circuit board from the opposite side (easy on nice double
sided boards).  I passed them through the bracket with grommets and
soldered them to the pots.

See attached photo of by Blacet FD.  I have several photos of this thing I
can send privately (as to not clog up the list with big files).  But, here
is one that answers your question and may be of general interest.

Normally, I use a nut on the back of the pots (recent list discussion). 
But, these are the plastic threaded ones that really cannot be
overtightened (so I have only a spacer).  I'll probably go back and add the
nuts though since I finally found a source.

Larry Hendry