Potentiometer sockets?

[amcmann95]

Hey all,
Anyone know of a quick way to switch out pots? Hopefully like a sleeve that just fits over the lugs. Google has been a bust for me so far. Probably just dont have the right search term or something dumb. Im a/b-ing a stock circuit and a modified version  and want to have something quicker than desoldering and resoldering the lugs. Thanks!

[diablochris6]

My dumb method is to simply set the pots in and bend them over a little to make sure the there is contact between the pot legs and solder pads. Then I don't breathe and make sure things dont wiggle too much.

[madbean]

You can always use a breadboard - put wires in the pads for the pots, wires on the pots you are testing and then connect them via the BB. Or, if you have some solder leg pots, single inline sockets can be soldered to them to insert wires as a faux "quick connect".

[thesmokingman]

obviously the other answers are vastly superior but you can also add in parallel resistance to whatever the largest value of pot you were considering ...

[davent]

If there's room you might use small three hole terminal blocks, i think the spacing is 5mm which matches 16mm pot lug spacing.
For my breadboarding pots i have a little board with two rows of back to back connected blocks, one row takes the pots, the second row takes the leads to the breadboard.


dave

[Ralfg]

My technique is to use solder lug style pots and attach them with extra leads. Makes them really easy to switch out and when you are happy replace them with pcb mounts, or not.

[reddesert]

I've pushed pots into the board like Chris mentions. This works better on double layer board where there is plating through the hole, and not so well on single sided board, perf, etc, I think.

My idea, which I haven't carried out yet, is to get some push in terminals like these: http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/push-in-terminals/ for pushing into the board, and either solder wire to them or connect them to the pots with clip leads.

I'd like to be able to do this because I want to connect the pots to test and try out circuits, but for board mounted pots it's considered good practice to drill the enclosure before final soldering of the pots/switches, but usually I want to test the circuit before drilling an enclosure for it - I'm always way behind on drilling enclosures / boxing circuits. So there's a chicken-egg problem.