Just added a remote control to Moreplay

[chris ericksen]

I am not a poster. Just a reader. Today I will post as this is maybe helpful to some.

Last year I built a Moreplay pre to upgrade my system. I had a Rotel in front of my Tool Shed Transcendence 12 300B power amp.. This sounded good but I wanted a tube preamp so Matt (ToolShed Amps) suggested building a Moreplay. Well alrighty then, I did. There were pluses and minuses with the Moreplay, but it sounded great with the 300B thru my Altec-Lansing VOTT A15-A8's. Really made the low end better and the highs less piercing. Especially after changing the original 6V6 tubes to some Zenith 6V6G and then rolling in some classic 1940's units.   But.... I lost my ability to adjust the volume while sitting on my ass. Yeah I know. But sometimes your watching youtubes or whatever and volume control remotely is nice. So I put the Rotel back in the system. So I was explaining my situation with Matt and he said EBay has a ALPS27 Motor Remote Control unit. So I bought the 10K unit with pot plus shipping and tax for 55.

I was not sure if it would work very good or not, but willing to try.

Well I installed it without too much effort. The unit slid into the slots of the old pot. I enlarged the hole which was already by the pot cutout to 3/8" for the infared led. Screwed the pot in place and soldered the wires to it. So the Moreplay is designed with just the right wire lengths and I had to replace some wires with longer ones and add wire and shrink tubes to others. Pretty simple. I also tested the remote unit prior to installation (just in case). The remote works across the room! I did find a 12V dc wall wart in my pile of stuff which was 350mA. Worked fine.

So I tested the amp and I cannot detect any noise, crackling, volume loss or gain, or issues with the addition of this unit.

There is two drawbacks which should be known. The pot shaft is approx .5 inch longer so the knob is higher then the others. The pcb on the remote is always on. So I plan to add another switch or replace the original on/off switch to SPDT.

This may be a solution for some of you out there.

Hope this helps.


 

[Paul Birkeland]

You may be able to rectify the heater winding in the Moreplay to make the 12V DC that you need for the remote, though you'd want to know what it's acceptable input voltage range is and a reasonable idea of idle and motor turning currents. 

[Thermioniclife]

The Alps motorized pots require 4-6 vdc. max current is 150Ma at clutch slipping point. A 5Vdc power supply is easy to make with a 7805 ic and some filtering and stabilizing caps.
The question is what are you going to use as a control?

[Paul Birkeland]

Typically you would opt to get one as part of a bigger package with the remote included.

[Thermioniclife]

Roger that PB. 2 and 4 channel ir controlled relay boards are cheap and plenty on Ebay.
If using something like that the board will probably need 12v but keep in mind the alps needs 4-6v

[chris ericksen]

This is the unit I installed. It requires a 12V ac/dc source. It has been in the unit for a week now and I am satisfied with it. Did not change audio but the pot is sure smoother than the original.

[Paul Birkeland]

Try feeding that board with the heater winding from the power transformer.  I bet it will work just fine!

[Thermioniclife]

Looks like a nice tidy unit. I've only done it old school ways. I'm going to look into that.

[lms]

Do you have any pics of what this looks like on the inside?
Thx.