Pan vs Switch

[icecycle66]

What happens if you use an assortment of pots to pan between things that usually use a switch to select?
This could be for anything that uses a switch to select wave shapes or whatever, but for simplicity sake lets talk a bout distortion.

So on the Slow Loris we have a switch that selects between three different clipping modes.  Instead of using a switch, is there a way to wire a panning potentiometer to select modes?  And if we did, would it work?


(Also, I'll be in Salt Lake City [Lehi actually] tonight to sign titties if anyone is out there to hang out.]

[drolo]

I think it really depends on what you are panning.
In the example of the clipping diodes, panning from one set of diodes to the other will basically defeat any clipping, depending on the value of the pot.
For example, if you are on the middle position of a 20k pot between 2 sets of diodes, you are adding 10k in series to each set at which point they might not clip anymore. What could perhaps work is to use a pot to gradually short out a set of diodes that is in series with another set of diodes.

[midwayfair]

Yes. You need to tailor the pot value to something appropriate for the resistances involved, but sure. There might be times when the resistance required is high enough that you might have trouble finding a pot large enough.

>three different clipping modes

A pot also really can only divide between two things.

>if we did, would it work?

For certain definitions of "work."

The other reason for switches is recall. In the Bearhug, I could very easily have used a pot for the decay, but it's a switch so that it's easy to switch between two useful settings. The Snowday could have had a pot for the compression threshold but a switch was just simpler for the control panel.