Vectrex brightness pot

debaser138

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I recently got a Vectrex that was damaged during shipping and the brightness pot was snapped right in half. I'm not getting any kind of picture. Can hear the game playing blind but that's it. I'm hoping the broken pot is all that's wrong with it.

In looking at the schematics, it's a 250k ohm 1/4W v-type linear pot. Anyone know where I could find one of these? The local electronics shop had one but it was only 1/8W so I passed on it. Would like to find something as close to the original pot as possible. Anyone here ever had to replace their brightness pot?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Did you check Bob Roberts? I believe he has a section with a ton of different pots with photos.
 
Did you check Bob Roberts? I believe he has a section with a ton of different pots with photos.

Yup. He doesn't have one with the correct orientation and the nearest value was 300k. The knob for the pot would be facing inward. I would have to extend the legs so I could make it fit properly. I've checked Mouser and Digikey as well but can't seem to find one that will work.

I think I"m going to try a 250k ohm 1/8 watt pot I found at the local electronics shop today. The original was 1/4 watt. We'll see what happens.
 
I think I'd be leary of using a smaller wattage pot. Larger would be acceptable. What not just get a pot with higher ohms and put 250k resistors in line?
 
Wanted to post a follow up in case anyone else needs to replace their brightness pot. I've had no luck finding a brightness pot that was a match for the original so I bought one from Bob Roberts. It's part # P1201 and can be found here: http://www.therealbobroberts.net/pots.html

I had to solder cut capacitor leads to each of the legs of the pot to make it fit properly. You will also have to use a plastic tool to adjust the brightness as it's not accessible with your fingers once the case is on. Installed it and it works great. The monitor on this Vectrex was all jacked up as the image was way too small vertically and the image was all distorted. Had to adjust all 4 of the size and linearity pots to make it look good. The vectors are pretty shaky tho so I think it's time to do a cap kit.
 
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