Genius SW-HF 5000 5.1 audio system master volume potentiometer hack
Good day folks. A friend of mine asked me to have a look at his Genius 5000 5.1 audio system which no longer played sound on the rear and front channels - only the Sub/center channel worked. I took the back panel off and after some testing, I found the TDA amplifier for the front channels had become shorted, causing two fuses in the transformer's secondary to open, which also cut the power for the other TDA for the rear channels. The SUB/center TDAs run off a different winding and thus they were unaffected. I replaced all said components and the system was now working, playing sound on all channels, but the volume control was rather scratchy. By that I mean it would cut out in certain positions of the master volume knob, plus the front-left speaker could not reach full volume for some reason. I took front panel off hoping to be able to clean the master pot. Unfortunately, it's one of those motorized pots, apparently dedicated to this model, because I could not find one in my country for the life of me. I could've just left it alone and warn my buddy about the possible sound cut-outs and leave it as it is, but once again I was too zealous for my own good and took the pot apart anyway. It came apart fairly easily with just a couple of bent metal tabs holding everything in place and all was going smoothly until one of the wiper pins on one of the "stages" broke off.....great. So now I'm stuck with this potentiometer strewn all over my workbench and this horrible feeling that I almost had it working ! 
Fixing it is out of the question and so is finding a new one, but then it hit me: WHAT IF we hack this thing. Upon closer inspection of the tracks inside the pot, I discovered that each "stage" (there's 3 of them stacked together) has 4 tracks which correspond to the 4 brushes which spin around to make contact (duuh, that's how a pot works). To cut the sh!t short, I was wondering if I could replace the pot with a digital pot and if you guys can recommend a suitable one. Apparently it has to be 50k, since that's the resistance of the tracks in the current one. It'd need 6 pots in total (2 per channel), which I don't think is really possible in the same package, so I might need 3 chips to achieve this....any thoughts ? Cheers.
Fixing it is out of the question and so is finding a new one, but then it hit me: WHAT IF we hack this thing. Upon closer inspection of the tracks inside the pot, I discovered that each "stage" (there's 3 of them stacked together) has 4 tracks which correspond to the 4 brushes which spin around to make contact (duuh, that's how a pot works). To cut the sh!t short, I was wondering if I could replace the pot with a digital pot and if you guys can recommend a suitable one. Apparently it has to be 50k, since that's the resistance of the tracks in the current one. It'd need 6 pots in total (2 per channel), which I don't think is really possible in the same package, so I might need 3 chips to achieve this....any thoughts ? Cheers.
...Looking around the internet, I found some pots, so how does this one look for instance ? 
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