[sdiy] bit one

[greg montalbano]

At 06:19 PM 2/6/04 +0100, Rude 66 wrote:

>well, i disconnected the connectors and then put them together again, they
>were not cleaned. they didn't look too dirty, though..

This would be a good place to comment on this, as it's come up before -- 
many synths with numerous internal connectors (DIP, inline, & whatever 
you'd call those cheesy things inside the ARP Odyssey) can have their 
performance significantly improved by cleaning those connectors.  And they 
probably won't "look dirty" -- it's a matter of oxidation building up, over 
a period of years, to where the connections are intermittent (or actually 
behaving more like a capacitor than a connector).  Sometimes removing & 
reinserting them is enough to clear the invisible oxidation;  sometimes 
they need more aggressive cleaning.

>what would be good to clean those connectors?

This is where the commercially available "contact cleaners" (that are so 
controversial in pot cleaning) come in handy -- basically, any ethyl 
alcohol-type cleaner (one that will leave no residue) should work.  I use 
an old toothbrush;  clean the connector pins AND the socket pins.
And it should go without saying that they should be allowed to dry out 
completely before powering up again.

~GMM