[sdiy] Cleaning scratchy pots

[Michael E Caloroso]

You are faced with unobtainable mechanical hardware on gear of ANY
era, not just 70s and 80s.

You may not have scratchy pots with gear newer than 20 years, but
check back in ten years or more.  They WILL fail.

A lot of vintage ARP synths were ruined because of botched attempts to
re-lube slidepots.  There is a VERY good case where new replacement is
better than cleaning original parts.  I avoided ARP synths because you
couldn't source new replacements, it was only recently that a suitable
replacement with slidepot plus adapter board was available through
gmusynths.com and Phil Cirocco.

Slidepots are a MAJOR pet peeve of mine.  Very few are long life
parts, and they cost a lot more than most customers are willing to pay
for.  Unless the slidepots are vertical - where minimal dust can
settle on the elements - you should keep gear with slidepots covered
when not in use if you want to keep them running.

MC

On 1/6/20, Florian Anwander <fanwander at mnet-online.de> wrote:
> Hi Neil
>
> Am 06.01.20 um 00:11 schrieb Neil Johnson:
>> Why not just replace the potentiometer with a new one?Or is this
>> just for parts that are no longer obtainable?
>>
> You are right for new ones of course, but I have to say that I never had
> "scratchy pot"-troubles with gear from the last 20 years.
>
> But the threadstarter talks about a potentiometer, that was a custom
> device made for Korg back in 1984.
> If you restore gear like 70's and early 80's synths then you are faced
> with the unobtainable mechanical hardware all the time.
>
> Florian
>
>
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