Fried Pot?

[Deep Blue]

Ok, so I built an MXR Dist+ using JD Sleep's layout.  It worked fine when it was just a mass of wired and components, so I decided to box it.

I'm using a b-sized taiwanese box.  I had to really cram all of the stuff into the box to get it to fit in there.  There was a bit of excess wire.

So, anyways, I got it all packed in, and I plugged it in, and it doesn't work.  At first, I'm pretty sure stuff was shorting out on other stuff inside the box.  At one point, smoke was coming out of one of the jacks.

Now that I've removed it from the box, I can't really see any damage.  When I plug it in now, outside of the box, it sort of works, but at about 1/5 the volume.  It sounds a little fuzzier and noisier than it used to, and I have to turn my amp to 5 or 6 to get the volume I should be getting at 1 or 2.

I think I fried a pot, so I ordered new pots, but it will be a week or two before they show up.  Does it sound like a pot issue?  Maybe an IC issue?

[petemoore]

I tried it once and didn't like it. A pot on an EasyFace smoked and the insides were glowing orange.
 Hopefully you're socketting your opamps, installing another pot should be no prob.
 You could 'build' a fixed value [output] 'pot' from two fixed resistors [fixed attenuation no vol control], get one from RS, or just wait till the 'ship comes in'.
 most of the ckt is probably fine, I know the pot's damaged, and the IC may or may not be...a substitute opamp is the easiest way to determine IC health.

[Deep Blue]

How do I make one of these fixed pots?  I am most interested.

[SoundTech]

In the case of the 10K volume pot for the Dist+, the pot is 10,000 ohms across the two outer lugs.  The wiper travels the range of the pot dividing the voltage.  It's a log taper, so this following example isn't exactly right, but for a moment, imagine it was a linear taper.  At half the travel of the pot, the wiper is at the midway point of the resistance.  So, if you measured the resistance between the wiper and either of the outer lugs, you resistance would be 5K.  So, there's 5K from "signal in" lug to wiper, and another 5K from wiper to ground.  That's like taking two 5K resistors, connecting them in series from the output of your circuit to ground, and then taking the junction point of the two resistors as the output of your volume pot.  Adjusting the ratios of the two resistors will change your output level.  For example, say 2.5k in series with 7.5K to ground, the junction of the two resistors would be 75% of your circuit output. Reverse the order, and it's 25%.