The Trouble With (A) Pot

This is a Rust Driver.

My Rust Driver, as a matter of fact.  My pal, Josh, got this for me many, many moons ago.  It’s a pretty badass plexi-esque dirt pedal, the kind of thing you can get a lot of zing out of.  Solo time?  Step on it.  Need some big ol’ rhythmic crunch?  Step on it.  It’s a fun pedal.

After using it for about three years, the potentiometer became unreliable, to say the least.  It was crackling, making noise when I turned it and seemed as if it was cutting out.  Eventually, the potentiometer started spinning freely and the pedal stopped working.

I opened it up and found that the chintzy potentiometer had come apart.   

It hasn't come apart here; this is after I tried to reassemble it.  Bear with me...

Here’s what it looks like out of the box:

Lame.  What the hell is that thing, even?  Seriously!  Did that come out of an Atari controller or something?  Who uses something this cheap in a piece of musical equipment?  WHO?!?

The Rust Driver is made by HAO.  HAO is distributed by Godlyke Distributing Inc.  I guess that’s who.

My first idea was to try to reassemble the pot, which did not work.  At all.  I tried to find one of these jive turkey pots but had no luck.  The Rust Driver ended up sitting in a drawer and I ended up not worrying too much about it for quite some time.

Eons passed…

Of course, at some point, I found a need to test drive some dirt pedals, so out came ye olde Rust Driver.  I popped it open and, in addition to the garbage pot, saw some other things that chapped my hide in a big, bad way.  This stand off, for example:

Really?  This thing broke loose from the glue the first time I opened the pedal, trying to figure out what was going wrong.  Granted, the Rust Driver is an INCREDIBLY low profile pedal.  Small enclosure, tiny footprint.  Still, this just doesn’t seem necessary.

Another thing is this wretched, rubbery glue crap:

Seriously?  Is this in any way necessary?  If so, someone please, please, please enlighten me, because it just seems like a massive mess o’ *ssholery.  What if one of these components kicks the bucket?  Do I laboriously scrape away at this gunk?  Do I send it to HAO for repair?

Good luck on that count.  No dice, as far as I can tell, on any kind of service.

Left to my own devices, I started thinking about it and realized a 16mm Alpha pot would fit in the space taken up by the disposable pot in the Rust Driver.   

I tried to test the pot to identify its value but got nothing.  This was truly a dead pot.  I searched the interwebs for the codes printed on the pot and came up with a value of 500k and happened to have an A500k Alpha pot on hand.  Clipped out the Kleenex pot, installed the Alpha and… it worked.  Done deal.

John LaChapelle

March 5th, 2013, we lost a great guitarist, guitar instructor and human being.  John J. La Chapelle was 91 and most of his years on this earth were spent bringing the joy of music to thousands of students and audience members and fellow musicians.

Left to right: Jeff Day, John La Chapelle, Larry Coryell

I took lessons from John twenty seven years ago, starting around 1986.  He would whack his tuning fork on his knee, tune up his beautiful archtop electric and away we’d go. In the time I studied with him, I went from absolute beginner to learning songs off records by ear and playing in the high school jazz band.  John turned me on to Les Paul by loaning me a rare, valuable, original 10” EP from The Les Paul Trio, which included the amazing “Guitar Boogie” and was a revelation to me.  I came back the next week having learned to play “Guitar Boogie” and John was quick to praise my accomplishment, as he always was.  Endlessly encouraging and inspiring, John was a truly exceptional, gifted instructor.

I was fortunate enough to perform with John once, for a jazz band performance.  He was invited to sit in and play a solo.  I asked if he needed me to move my music stand so he could see the sheet music and he said, “No, that’s okay.”  I was sweating bullets. John was, by then, as much a guitar hero to me as Hendrix or Page and I was nervous to play back to back solos with this guy.  And I should have been!  I played some kind of sloppy mess then he took everyone into the heavens with a beautiful, expressive, perfectly harmonious solo.  Regardless of my performance, it was a day I’ll never forget and the memory is a warm one.

John with Lee Berger

We have so many teachers throughout our life; John La Chapelle was one of the best I knew and I was so, so lucky to have him show me a chord or two.  Rest in piece, brother.