CH Products Pro Pedals Pots

EDIT: I pulled my pedals apart for the second time. It seems the pot recovers when the pedals are disassembled. I’ve reassembled with less screws, so the case isn’t as tight around the pot. Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but so far so good. While I am still curious about replacement pots for these CH Products…products, I guess this post can be deleted now. Cheers.

Wow… CH PPPP! What an initialism!

Greetings all! This is my first post. I joined because I’m having trouble finding a replacement potentiometer for my CH Products rudder pedals. There’s so many options on DigiKey and my knowlege is limited. I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

A bit of background on the situation. About a wwwk ago, the pot started jumping up to the top of the Z axis on returning the axis to centre. It would do this almost every time I moved the pedals. I tried pulling them apart to clean the runners that the pedal base rolls in. This didn’t fix it.

I contacted CH support. They are happy to supply me a replacement pot for free, however they don’t ship internationally. I’m in Australia. I got a quote from shipping proxy “Shipito” but I’m looking at between $20 and $140 (USD) in shipping to get one official CH pot sent to my door. I’ve asked CH for alternative options. I would be happy to buy a pot locally or from a warehouse supplier like DigiKey as I’m sure they can ship much cheaper.

So far, CH haven’t answered my request for the pot specification so that I can try to find an alternative. I managed to find the pot specs on a forum post from near the turn of the century. They are as follows:

Potentiometer - HP106, 50K, $9.75, Potentiometer for CH Pedals, Marked “900-630”.
and
Potentiometer - HP100, 100K, $9.75, Potentiometer for most all of CH’s Joysticks. Markings on the back of pot are “HP-100A”

The original poster of this information took this info from the old CH Products spare parts website, which is now closed, unfortunately.

I’ve trawled through the many pots listed on DigiKey, but I feel like I’m flying blind. Most of the results turned up pots market as “obsolete” so I’m now at my wits end.

I don’t particularly want to spend $40 on shipping a $5 part to my door. It’s looking more and more like my only option, however.

Sorry for this long and, perhaps, convoluted post. I hope someone can help me.

Thanks for reading.

PIK.

Hello @t00thPIK,

I am glad to hear that you were able to fix your unit. Unfortunately I was not able to find any further specifications on that part either. It appears to be a part that is made by CTS specifically for CH Products and is not available to the general public. I did notice there is a trend on many of their products not to release the specifications which is typical of manufacturers not wanting to release specs for fear of unauthorized reproduction. If you are able to get specifications or have any further questions we can assist with please feel free to contact us.

-Robert

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Thanks for the reply, Robert.

Your reasoning for them not being available to the public makes sense. When my search turned up all those “obsolete” results, I found that most, if not all, the items listed were from that CTS company. Interesting.

All three pots are stamped HP-100A followed by a 4 digit number. I don’t recall the number, but its was the same on all three. Something like 1542.

I contemplated replacing with an equivalent pot, but it has to have the same chassis size as it needs to fit in the existing mounting position.

Anyway, it’s not a huge issue now, as long as it’s working. I ordered some VKB pedals. I just wanted to get these things back to working order so I can sell them on.

Thanks again for the reply.

This actually looks like it may be a date code. 42nd week of 2015 is commonly displayed as 1542 by many manufacturers. Often this is verified with the manufacturer or at times on a data sheet.

If you have all the measurements we could certainly do some digging on our end. It is usually a process of going data sheet to datasheet, however at times possible. A picture may also help. I can’t be sure we have something, however once posted you never know who might see the post that may have solved this problem already.

-Robert

Ahh that makes sense. Well no doubt I’ll have to pull them apart again sooner rather than later, so Ill get the actual number then.

You were right about APEM not releasing details to outsiders. The support person I’ve been communicating with said “That information is proprietary” in response to my asking for the specs of the potentiometers. To that end, I will also try measuring the pots next time I have them out. We know they’re 5v, 100k pots. Thats about all the details we have though. It’s probably not really necessary at this point though.

As I said, since pulling them apart again, I’ve discovered the pot is in perfect working order. There was just something upsetting it when the unit was sucurely assembled. It’s very strange.

I know these posts are old, HOWEVER, My potentiometer is “Skipping” and my desk is a bit dusty under it, so i’m GUESSING HERE, but i think i jhust need to clean mine… So i looked around and found on YouTube that this works for ALL POTS on ALL Pedals and flight sticks etc… (it’s a channel dedicated to electric guitars which mostly use potentiometers for “volume Control knobs”. So they say to use a product called: DeoxIT (the first letter as well as the last two letters are capitalized) i’ll link the video but they claim that spraying this stuff on your POT’s will clean them as well as seal them from future dust etc… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7guedH2AzY (it’s titled “Schector After Hours”)

We don’t currently carry that stated DeoxIT cleaner, but we do have a product I’ve personally used that might be of some assistance with cleaning out older potentiometers, as well.

3M’s Novec-series contact cleaner, 3M155807-ND is entirely inert, electrically and chemically nonreactive, and thus can be used to spray down just about anything and wash off grit, grime, and accumulated dust. The cleaner evaporates tracelessly after a couple of minutes, leaving behind a cleaner part and no residue that needs extra cleaning itself. I’ve found it quite useful for cases where a canned air dust cleaner isn’t quite getting the job done but anything with solvents in it would be a terrible idea.

Novec can be a little expensive, but one can goes a pretty long way and it’s a very useful step between a canned-air duster and going at your device with screwdrivers and toothpicks.

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