Avoid Antique Electronics Supply's Ridged-Top Chickenhead Knobs

[dchang0]

Yeah, I've bought two or three so far and been underwhelmed by their design. (Their flat-top chickenheads have been good, though not great.)

The problems come from the brass insert being too thin for the set screw to gain much purchase. So I've had to grind the set screws 1/8" shorter to remove the tapered tip, run them through a die to clean up the threads, and run a tap through the insert.

Mojotone's ridged chickenhead knobs have nice fat inserts and screw on VERY securely.

[Enzo]

You have told us, and thank you. But have you told THEM? Especially when it is a reasonable size company, feedback is important. They may change vendors or specs based on consumer response.

[dchang0]

Nope, not yet. I'll drop 'em a line.

Edit: Sent in the message. Thanks for putting me up to it.

[guitarmike2107]

Those are chineese made, I have a few here I will need to check too.

thanks for the heads up

[GregS]

What were the part numbers? They sell a number of different chicken-head knobs.

[dchang0]

The one I had the big trouble with was p/n P-K302C. Surprisingly, the description says "high quality."

They were very cool when I informed them of the problem and said that they'd have their buyers reconsider their suppliers.

[cminor9]

I am a big fan of AES. I have gotten a few bum parts from them over the years, and they always make good on things.

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

Uh oh... I just took delivery on another 100 knobs this week.
I've used many many hundreds of the P-K 300Cs and had not seen this issue... is this something that is just effecting the P-K302C knobs?

[dchang0]

The P-K300s (flat top) seem to be fine. They're not the best knobs I've seen, but they haven't given me any trouble. It's the ridged/raised P-K302 models that seem to have problems.

And this could be temporary, as AES may switch suppliers sooner or later.

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

What is it about the P-K300Cs that causes you to label them as not the best knobs you've seen?
To be honest, I've bought thousands of chicken head knobs over the years and have run into some real dogs myself!
I returned three bags of 100 each one time because every one of them were cracked when the brass insert was pushed into the plastic body.
The really inexpensive ones I saw on a couple WeberVST chassis kits were unusable by me. The bodies were short and the brass insert was too thin to take a good thread.
Do think these are from the same manufacturer?

[dchang0]

I'm looking mainly for sturdiness in terms of being able to tighten the set screw down snugly without damaging the post and without using blue Loctite to keep it from backing out. By snugly, I mean that the knob should grab the post firmly enough for repeated push/pull or rotary power switch operation without getting loose over time.

Basically, that means the brass insert needs to be thick enough to have enough thread turns on it for the set screw to remain screwed in on its own AND the set screw and insert must have close-to-spec threads on them. Usually, one or both are off: the insert is too thin, resulting in only one complete turn of the thread OR the set screw is not made to the proper thread dimensions and is too loose to stay put on its own.

I do suspect that nearly all the knobs carried by anybody come from the same factory or factories, probably in a low-wage country like China/Indonesia. There are probably only a couple of suppliers whose knobs are made to an exacting spec (probably former MILSPEC), and those are the ones that we end up liking.

[cminor9]

hah, the day this was posted I had just order some of these. Amp is done, and I went to put them on and...grrrr! They don't fit the alpha pots I bought. I had to *really* press them on. That's kinda lame, I thought they were pretty standard. I know there are different size shafts on pots, but it's not like we're talking about a range greater than a mm or two.

[dchang0]

Yeah! I had the same problem. There's a lot of extra plastic "flashing" inside, above the brass bushing. I had to use a Dremel and a grinder bit to clear out the extra plastic.

That's not so bad--the big problem was the crappy brass set screw.

[Prairie Dawg]

You guys might find something useful here.

Leeds Radio - knobs

[No457 Snowy]

Yeah, I just had the same thing with the P-K302C Cream knobs I got from AES. I had to clean out the inside diameter of each one so it would slide onto my Alpha pots without pushing them. The customer service from AES was excellent though.



Snowy