Quote:
You can think of it this way. Let's say the impedance of what you are driving is 1 meg ohm. If you turn the pot to the center of the resistance (which will not be the center of rotation with an audio taper) the voltage at the output will be just sightly less than 50% of the input voltage. If the impedance of what you are driving is 10K ohms at the same rotational position the voltage output will be around 14%. Therefore the audio taper will be greatly changed. What that means is with the high impedance the change in rotation will produce an output that was designed to match ear characteristics, ie. equal perceived changes in loudness that correspond to the same changes in rotation. As the impedance driven drops the rate of change in volume from loud to soft will drop much faster or conversely the change in volume from soft to loud will increase much slower. Again, that rate of change whatever it is may not be of any importance to you.
Got it. Looking at the schematic: after entering the tape return, the signal travels through a 6.8K resistor and then to the 250K balance pot and 100K volume pot (with associated loudness circuit), then is capacitively coupled to the first stage of the power amp. So I'm thinking I'll be OK.