What's the opposite of a shorting bar?
A longing bar? A diminishing bar? Maybe attenuating bars? At any rate, I wanted to make a few in-line attenuators to go between one of my 281e Function Generators, and a 292e low pass gate, which I mostly use in low-pass mode. I should state right up front that this is a fairly ugly hack, but I find it useful, so maybe someone else will, too.
Here's a picture of the finished attenuating bars:

Notice that there two styles, one with the pot on the bottom, and one with the pot on the top. This is so that no jacks are blocked. Also notice the black wires running vertically under the longing bars. This is a bundle of ground wires, one from each longing bar, headed to the ground jack on the back of the 201e

Parts list
For each longing bar you will need:
A dual banana plug. I used a Pomona MDP-2
A small potentiometer and knob. I used the 25 mm shaft pots that I use in Eardrill modules.
A roughly half inch ring of 1.5" (.75" recovered) heat shrink tubing. (that link points to enough shrink to do about a hundred of these)
In addition to the above, you will need a single banana plug. I used an Emerson. (not shown below)


Step 1 - defiling the dual banana
You're going to have to take your pristine dual banana plug and chop and channel it.
First, using diagonal clippers, carefully cut off the cable strain relief ring. Save this scrap, we're going to use it later.


Next cut some holes in the middle of the banana plug. I used a Dremel, but a drill would probably work just as "well." There is one wide hole that the pot legs are going to stick through, and a pair of smaller one that will act as a strain relief for the long ground wire.



Step 2 - preparing the pot
First, carefully bend the legs of the pot so that they stick straight out. Then attach a couple feet of wire to the bottom of the pot (long enough to reach the grounding banana on the back of the 201e), and an inch or two to the wiper and the top of the pot, as shown. I'd like to formally apologize here for using red and orange wires and a red banana plug. Usually I like contrast.



Step 3 - mating the pot and the banana
Insert the legs of the pot through the wide hole you made in the banana plug in step 1. The ground wire (the black wire in these pictures) routes through the two smaller holes made in step 1.
The wiper wire (orange in these pictures) and the top of the pot wire (red in these pictures) get routed to to the two poles of the banana plug. Which wire goes where depends upon whether it is a pot-on-top or pot-on-bottom style. I've marked the heat shrink with a metalic Sharpie to indicate the signal flow.

Have I apologized yet for using red and orange wires and a red banana plug?.


Remember the little ring that you cut off in step 1? Here's what we do with it:

I cut it down by about a third, so that it just fits underneath the pot, to help support it. You could glue it in, if you like, but I didn't bother with mine.


Step 4 - shrink it
This is the penultimate step. I find it useful to mark the direction of the signal flow, and the silver Sharpie works pretty well, at least if you are more careful than I was in drawing your arrows. Here is a picture of one of each style after shrinking and applying knobs.




Step 5 - become grounded
Finally, gather all the ground wires into a tidy bundle and connect them to the ground banana. This bundle of wires needs to be long enough to reach the ground banana on the back of the middle boat in a Buchla system. You have to take a little care to make the wires route well, but the ground banana fits between the boats in a 201e.

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I hope someone finds this information useful. If you need pots for this project, I have them available Chris Muir - 08/24/09

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