Me bein' a mechanical engineer and all, I like this thing:

http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=470&item=MPOT-10K&type=store



I tried them, and they do indeed do the job. I went with the 20K version, rather than the 10K.

However... they were pretty low quality from a mechanical standpoint. We damaged three of them just securing them to the faceplate of the box they are installed in. The threaded portion is so flimsy that light tightening (maybe 2--3 ft-lbs) actually collapsed the threads onto the potentiometer shaft, making three of them non-functional until I did some Dremel work and removed that portion of the pot. I suspect in so doing I damaged some of the internal workings as well, because two of them subsequently exhibited wonky behavior, refusing to attenuate all the way down.

All that being said... I just ordered 10 replacements (on the theory that at least half of them would turn out to be usable) because in quantities of 10 they were only $3.50 apiece. Why not spend a bit more and get better ones, you ask? Because really good motorized pots cost in the vicinity of $400 each! That's not a misprint: The pots I wanted to use came out to three hundred and ninety five dollars each. Plus shipping.

In all fairness, those were pretty decent pots... very high precision, with dual, sealed ball bearings in the potentiometer section and variable speed motors. And I did get a quote for some lesser pots that came in at about $140 each.

So, we'll redo the "pot box" with more of those cheap pots as replacements treating them as though they were made of spun glass and hope for the best.

Thanks very much for the link!

tanstaafl.