KVR Audio

Lo Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo Fi Massahkah** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 7:55 pm

Hi,

I want to replace some of the pots and faders of my UC33e with joystick potentiometers instead and put the whole thing in a custom box. Mainly as to control the FX in Ableton Live which has a nice X/Y control input. I don't have any real knowledge in electronics and don't know much about different components. But when I open the box it sure looks like potentiometers (rotary and slide) - but I don't know what resistance they have. So I wrote the M-Audio tech support. This was their answer:

"I am not entirely sure your question being that the UC-33e does not have potentiometers (potentiometer being a pot that controls actual volume ie, signal level). The UC-33e is a control surface, so any changes that are heard are actually occurring within the software, no audio goes through the device."

That I knew...

But the pots do not look like digital encoders - could they be? If not, does anyone know what resistance the pots are?

cold c · Post by **cold c** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 8:37 pm

I don't know the answer, but can't you test a potentiometer's resistance using a multimeter? (The only pots I've seen had three connectors, but then they also had the resistance rating on the back.)

You may be better off building your own DIY MIDI controller, I remember seeing some sites about this but I don't have the links. Try googling for "DIY MIDI controller".

Lo Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo Fi Massahkah** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 8:46 pm

Cold C,

Thanks for your reply. I didn't want to unsolder it yet to look at the pots closer, and I don't have a multimeter - guess I'll get one tomorrow.

I'm aware of the DIY option (www.ucapps.de) - I'm about to build the MidiBOX SID synth. But I wanted to go ahead and do something not quite as big first. And since I already own the UC33e...

Cheers,
Mikael

Spotte · Post by **Spotte** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 9:22 pm

Digital encoders and potentionometers are very different things-they're not interchangeable.

Can you take two of the encoders out of your keyboard and mount them to your joystick? Or find a joystick that already uses digital encoders and try to hook that up...

just a few thoughts...
---scott

GaryG · Post by **GaryG** » Mon Jul 26, 2004 10:18 pm

stating the obvious perhaps but if you've a soundcard with a gameport then there are numerous little apps out there that convert a joysticks movements to midi data ( one here http://members.nextra.at/hubwin/midi.html for instance)

.g

Lo Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo Fi Massahkah** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:07 pm

I got myself a multimeter today and tried to measure the resistance of my pots. This is what I got:

Pot turned fully left: 0 ohm - as expected!
Pot turned fully right: display says 0.72 - I expected it to be higher.
Somewhere in the middle it reads 3.22 when multimeter set to 20K range, and 12.5 when meter set to 200K range.

Please help me interpret these numbers. I'm confused!

Cheers,
Mikael

Modding a UC33e