Whole house speaker volume switch wiring question

Howdy folks, attempting to repair or replace volume switches for individual rooms.
I have 7 rooms each with two speakers and their own volume knob.

These are 1973 switches, they have 6 wires to each volume knob with NO MARKINGS whatsoever, except for an 8 ohm stamp.

Anyone have a good guess which wire is what? (I'm assuming a left, right, common ground 'in', and a matching 'out' set.)
Or, is there a standard practice to figure it out without blowing up speakers or amps?

Planning on replacing some switches with the bottom picture- will just jumper the grounds.





replacing with this, hopefully

A clue! A couple clues actually.

This is for a room that only has one speaker

So we have two wires on the #1 terminal

Also notice you can see "1 2 3" on some terminals (not covered in solder)


Edited by hunterhicks - 2/16/13 at 3:57pm

Anyone recognize or know anything about these volume switches?

There's the whole 'balanced' switches, which I'm not quite sure if the mono price one is or not. I would assume the old ones are not.
Wonder if there's a problem mixing the two types.
Any info would be great.

Thanks everyone.
Not replacing any wiring, this is a two story house and realigning planets would be easier than rewiring it.
Goals are to replace bad pots and keep it as is- one broke, and one was not fixed with deoxidation spray.
This is genuine 1973.
Now, for entertainment, I've attached where all the speakers come together. There are 13 speakers coming into this. This is either genius, or the work of a madman. Or both.

I do not question what is going on here. I'm just going to 'go with it'. Trying to figure this mess out would be a waste of time (currently.) It works, so, I'm going to keep it patched up and not worry about it.

I'm running the house speakers on a zone 2 of an onkyo. This is just for gentle music throughout the house- quality/volume is not really an issue. (speakers are 1973 too!)

If these old volume switches are a thing of the past, I'll just patch up what I have and redo it one day when I'm really bored. Crown's VCAP switches look pretty specific for their system, I think- I need to take out one of my volume switches and run an ohm meter on it to see what's happening.
Kind of worried about taking one out- that might throw off the load to the amp!

Thanks guys- if you have bumped into one of these switches, give me a shout!

BOOM SHAKALAKA!

SAM64 is on it, I think. I did a VERY un scientific search for those items SAM suggested- which I've never even heard of. And I'm kind of a nerd.

doing a google image search on the L pad came up with some characters I might have seen before....

Then, on to ebay. check this guy out- exact same minus the orange color.


Ordering an L pad.

Next question, what the hell is a variable L pad?