Learn About Potentiometers for Circuit Bending

Video Transcript

LORIN EDWIN PARKER: Probably, the most used component in circuit bending is going to be the potentiometer. Here I have a slide potentiometer right here. This is one is one that adjusts with a thumb wheel and then I have the most common potentiometer, I have the knob. And these can be found on almost anything. Anytime you're turning a radio dial, anytime you're adjusting the volume on your stereo, what you are actually manipulating is this, and what's inside here is a little wiper. What happens is that wiper is connected to a piece of graphite, and as I turn it, it's going to move across that piece of graphite toward one side or toward the other side. Now you can see we have the sides here. If you connect up a signal to this side and you turn it all the way over in that direction, then the wiper is going to be connecting the middle with this side. As I turn the wiper away from that side, there's a greater distance between these two connections therefore a greater resistance. And that causes in our circuit bending--that causes greater change. So that's when I get that pitch shift when I have this circuit coming in and disrupting the flow from one side to the other. For these circuits, generally you just need to connect up two of these. If you connect that from the middle to one side, you're good. If you want to turn the knob the other direction, all you have to do is connect from the middle to the other side and then your control will go the other way. Just try experimenting with them and realize that they come in many different shapes and sizes but essentially they do the same things. Once again, they come in different values as well. If you're looking at an on-line supplier or looking at a local electronic store, this one is a 20K potentiometer. That's a pretty good value. I recommend that you keep around a 10K potentiometer, a 100K potentiometer, a 1 Meg potentiometer, and a 2-meg potentiometer. That way you have the four major values, so 10, 100K, and 1 Meg, and 2 Meg. These 2 Meg potentiometer was the one we we're actually using and the one we're going to use in this circuit. So, keep a couple around. You just got to do it by trial and error to figure out which one works best. That's the potentiometer or a knob in a nutshell.

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