[sdiy] bit one

[James R. Coplin]

Having just bought a whole bunch of these gold-plated connectors from mouser
for my Memorymoog overhaul, they really aren't that expensive. A $1.96 for
an 8 pin might be expensive compared to the $0.12 for the tin, but it's only
a couple of bucks overall. To completely change out the connectors in the
Memorymoog on every card with gold plate (and there are about a dozen each
with multiple connectors) cost me a whopping $56.  

James R. Coplin
***************
If anyone asks of my whereabouts,
simply tell them i've gone out the window
for a spot of tea and am not
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl [mailto:owner-synth-
> diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Scott Stites
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 1:50 PM
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] bit one
> 
> Hi gang,
> 
> I work in the customer service department for a test equipment
> manufacturer, and
> the term "Gold Pin Mod" is ubiquitous to everything that was produced up
> until a
> few years ago, when my department started forcing its hand.
> 
> It has to do with tin connectors, particularly on but sometimes not
> limited to,
> the power supplies.  Invariably, as time progressed, the equipment would
> become
> unreliable, jumpy, -generally screwed up in other words - and the customer
> would
> send it in.  Automatically, we'd replace the pins in the power supply
> connectors
> with gold plated pins, and soon we just started doing it automatically to
> anything that was in warranty.  Worked like a charm in exactly 100% of the
> cases.
>  Putting in tin connectors only bought a bit of time, and we are of the
> philosphy
> that you don't clean anything - you replace (these are high dollar boxes
> to begin
> with).  I finally moved up to 'core' development teams, and I *never*
> would sign
> off on anything that didn't have gold plated connectors on the power
> supplies,
> BOM price be damned.
> 
> Of course, these are service monitors that get a lot of field work in all
> kinds
> of environments, but all the same - if I had a tasty vintage synth like
> that, I'd
> raid Fort Knox and see if there wasn't some way to put in gold plated
> connectors.
>  Just a thought......
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 09:55:26 -0800, greg montalbano wrote:
> 
> >
> > 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
> 
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