KnobFeel: reviews focusing on the tactile properties of knobs, dials and controls

[knoxblox]

@Kilkrazy

This website acquires an extra frisson for UK based readers, to whom the word ‘knob’ is a slightly vulgar slang term for the intromissive organ

And you can still twist them to their limit.

[geoduck]

Airplane cockpit closeup pan scene

[teknocholer]

@smulder

… wait, they sell “potentiometer cleaner” in cans?

They do. Usually called contact cleaner.

I successfully used it on the volume control for my computer speakers which had become very noisy and erratic. Five years or so later, it’s still working perfectly.

More recently, my Breville coffee grinder started randomly timing out for between 3 and 20 seconds. I couldn’t get at the back of the potentiometer that controls the timer, so I pulled off the knob* and sprayed cleaner liberally on the shaft and around the nut holding it in place. After a few cycles the grinder was back to its proper 30 second timing and has been working for a few weeks.

*(yeah, yeah, I know)

[teknocholer]

@Kilkrazy

an extra frisson for UK based readers, to whom the word ‘knob’ is a slightly vulgar slang term for the intromissive organ

Since @beschizza is from the UK, I suspect that’s the joke.

The Wizard's Staff has a Knob on the End

[edthehippie]

the idiom in my vernacular
(slang, chiefly in the plural) A woman’s breast.
as in , how do your turn on a ----- ??
you play with it’s knobs !

[ although the british slang is next upon the list ]

[jerwin]

Knobs I kind of like:
Audiosource A100 amp
Knobs I don’t really like:
Marantz 1603 reciever (plasticky)
Breville smart Grinder Pro (sticks) The smaller timer knob is decent, it’s the ground size selector that isn’t.

[FGD135]

[smulder]

… just don’t get it mixed up with this stuff

or this stuff

[Grey_Devil]

Wrong kind of pot cleaner?

[smulder]

… not making my clock radio buttons work better

[Bonivus_elderheart]

@anothernewbbaccount

I saw that very recently in a piece of PC sound recording software when it updated. Utterly inoperable. I had to revert to the old version.

And also software with non-intuitive UIs, or a coherent manual written for the impatient who want the thing to do what it was gotten for and not spend an hour mucking around with it to make it work.

(VoiceMeeter, your “banana” product is fantastic, but your UI is really strange, and the lack of a section in your manual for “I want to take mic input and input from apps and be able to mix them without pulling what little hair I have left out” makes me sad. And that’s even when windows doesn’t try to do stupid things like forget the mic that’s plugged in… again. (that’s a side rant.))

On a side tangent, any recs for a KVM that’ll handle multiple USB devices, or switch audio inputs along with the usual keeb, mouse, video, and audio out, with four machines that doesn’t cost more than the combined total of the gear that’s plugged into it?

[Carbonman]

I still have a spray can of Radio Shack tuner (potentiometer) cleaner, certainly has CFCs as a propellant. It’s probably 40-50 years old.