ARP Slider Caps

The early ARP synthesizers had multicolored plastic caps on their sliders. These caps were originally intended for mini toggle switches, but can be used on the sliders with a little coaxing. You can still get these from Mouser Electronics. They are made by Mountain Switch, and the Mouser part number is the same as the Mountain Switch part number.

PART 
NUMBER     COLOR
-------------------------
10TB001    RED
10TB002    BLACK
10TB003    WHITE
10TB004    BLUE
10TB005    YELLOW
10TB006    GREEN

Here is the relevant Mouser page.

I've never actually ordered the green ones. Kevin Lightner of synthfool.com tells me they are a different size than the others. What is up with that?

The caps are really too small to go onto the sliders, but if you heat them under a heat gun (like you use for heat-shrink tubing) for about 4 seconds, they get soft enough to stick on. I heard this is how ARP originally did it. If you heat them too much they turn to a gelatinous state, so be careful about that.

I thought it would be a good idea to put up a page about this, since I keep having to search through the archives of the Analogue Heaven mailing list to find the part numbers.

The later ARP synths used very cool trapezoid-shaped slider caps. I have no idea where you can get these other than from an old ARP.