Deoxit on "pots"?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On another list we have been discussing using Caig DeOxit on pots (e.g.
Volume, balance, etc controls).

Caig has another product called "Fader Lube", which I assume is designed
for such a use.

The question I have is has anyone used the regular DeOxit on such controls
and the results? A web search yielded many hits of people using DeOxit and
having good results, and even a YouTube videos of it.

It's hard to tell from the postings, and the videos, how many the people
posting have done. Some of them are obviously people who have done
one or two, and others are not. I'm interested in hearing long term
experience.

Thanks in advance,

Geoff.

 

[Chuck]

On another list we have been discussing using Caig DeOxit on pots (e.g.
Volume, balance, etc controls).

Caig has another product called "Fader Lube", which I assume is designed
for such a use.

The question I have is has anyone used the regular DeOxit on such controls
and the results? A web search yielded many hits of people using DeOxit and
having good results, and even a YouTube videos of it.

It's hard to tell from the postings, and the videos, how many the people
posting have done. Some of them are obviously people who have done
one or two, and others are not. I'm interested in hearing long term
experience.

Thanks in advance,

Geoff.

In rare cases, deoxit will cause the slidepots to slightly bind so I
use Fader Lube on them and deoxit on rotating pots. Chuck

 

[N_Cook]

On another list we have been discussing using Caig DeOxit on pots (e.g.
Volume, balance, etc controls).

Caig has another product called "Fader Lube", which I assume is designed
for such a use.

The question I have is has anyone used the regular DeOxit on such controls
and the results? A web search yielded many hits of people using DeOxit and
having good results, and even a YouTube videos of it.

It's hard to tell from the postings, and the videos, how many the people
posting have done. Some of them are obviously people who have done
one or two, and others are not. I'm interested in hearing long term
experience.

Thanks in advance,

Geoff.

Why is it everyone else gets corroded or dirty pots and I always get the
worn ones?
Then there is the plague of microscopic Alps ones where the grease migrates
from shaft area to the wiper area and lifts the hair-thin metal from the no
sign of wear resistive track - 6 on one 2 yearold Korg last week, unusable
because all with this failing

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Why is it everyone else gets corroded or dirty pots and I always get the
worn ones?
Then there is the plague of microscopic Alps ones where the grease migrates
from shaft area to the wiper area and lifts the hair-thin metal from the no
sign of wear resistive track - 6 on one 2 yearold Korg last week, unusable
because all with this failing

What do you do to repair them? Replace?

Thanks, Geoff.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

In rare cases, deoxit will cause the slidepots to slightly bind so I
use Fader Lube on them and deoxit on rotating pots. Chuck

Thanks, I never thought of that.

Geoff.

 

[Fred]

On another list we have been discussing using Caig DeOxit on pots
(e.g. Volume, balance, etc controls).

Caig has another product called "Fader Lube", which I assume is
designed for such a use.

The question I have is has anyone used the regular DeOxit on such
controls and the results? A web search yielded many hits of people
using DeOxit and having good results, and even a YouTube videos of it.

It's hard to tell from the postings, and the videos, how many the
people posting have done. Some of them are obviously people who have
done one or two, and others are not. I'm interested in hearing long
term experience.

Thanks in advance,

Geoff.

Decades ago, I met an old organ repair technician at a Roland tech
seminar to become a certified Roland repair station. Most of the rest of
the participants were much younger than us, so we gravitated together and
had lunch.

I was spending a fortune each year buying products like DeOxit to clean
organ controls, the thousands of metal to metal contacts before
everything became conductive rubber. Talking about the price of this
stuff, which would make you think a pharmaceutical company produced it in
a lab, he said something to me that simply shocked me.

"Hell, you're wasting your money on all that crap. I've been cleaning
hifi, PA and organ contacts with WD40, which is very cheap and easy to
find without going to the most expensive electronic repair company and
paying their exhorbitant prices. I've been doing it for lots of years
with no returns or complaints. I think because it leaves a lube residue
on anything it touches the contacts stayed cleaner because they weren't
exposed to the moisture in the air."

We both had to fight the horribly humid coastal swamp gas we live in, he
in NC and I in SC. So, I had some old organs that were just awful coming
up so I tried it. I used WD40 ever since with fantastic results. It
makes a 40 year old, almost worn out expression pedal pot work like new
with audio as smooth as glass. Some of those pots are nearly unobtanium
because of their queer shafts and mountings.

Another nice thing about WD40 is its effects upon dragging or frozen pot
bearings, of course. One drop in a pot bearing and you wonder why noone
did it instead of twisting off the knob!

The new WD40 isn't even flammable any more. I'm still using it, but now
that I'm retired not so often...(c;]

Try it on something really nasty and see for yourselves. Crap on this
$20-40 a can nonsense. The cleaners are more expensive than a new pot!

......available at fine hardware emporiums, worldwide.....
.....and WalMart!

If it'll make you feel better, buy it from Ace Hdwe and pay double.

 

[Fred]

Korg

My condolences on the Korg. Here in the USA they fled and there are no
parts so we have to go through their US parts distributor,
tubesandmore.com, which is a fine company but the parts are in Japan and
they only order when there's a pile, not one at a time. tubesandmore.com,
AKA Antique Radio Supply, Tempe, AZ, is a great company, but getting Korg
parts is measured in Months, not weeks or days.

I service Korg keyboards since the 1980s. Nice stuff, no support.

 

[David Nebenzahl]

Decades ago, I met an old organ repair technician at a Roland tech
seminar to become a certified Roland repair station. Most of the rest of
the participants were much younger than us, so we gravitated together and
had lunch.

I was spending a fortune each year buying products like DeOxit to clean
organ controls, the thousands of metal to metal contacts before
everything became conductive rubber. Talking about the price of this
stuff, which would make you think a pharmaceutical company produced it in
a lab, he said something to me that simply shocked me.

"Hell, you're wasting your money on all that crap. I've been cleaning
hifi, PA and organ contacts with WD40, which is very cheap and easy to
find without going to the most expensive electronic repair company and
paying their exhorbitant prices. I've been doing it for lots of years
with no returns or complaints. I think because it leaves a lube residue
on anything it touches the contacts stayed cleaner because they weren't
exposed to the moisture in the air."

While not the same application, I've had good luck also using WD-40, or
at least WD-40-like substances on pots.

Someone gave me a 3/8" variable-speed drill that had a flaky speed
control. Since it was a freebie, I thought what the hell, sprayed the
control with some stuff I had for lube jobs (something called "EZ-Lube"
that I picked up several years ago, similar to WD-40 but a little better).

That drill works fine still, and is my go-to drill. So no need to use
that expen$ive cleaning product.


--
Comment on quaint Usenet customs, from Usenet:

To me, the *plonk...* reminds me of the old man at the public hearing
who stands to make his point, then removes his hearing aid as a sign
that he is not going to hear any rebuttals.

 

[Fred]

If you like WD-40 you will LOVE CRC 2-26

greg

Bought a couple of cases of CRC at a hamfest when EPA banned it for CFCs...

Most of the cans leaked propellant before I could get to use it....useless.

Some of them leaked product with the propellant, not sure how. Good thing
the cans were in the box. CRC is far more expensive than WD40 which works
great. Does the cheap price cause you to resist using it?

 

[Fred]

[email protected] (Dave Platt) wrote in @radagast.org:

I don't think I'd use WD-40 as a cleaner and residual treatment (due
to its possible tendency to gum up), *or* leave DeOxIt on the contacts
long-term (due to possible active effects from the active ingredients).

I'll put your mind at ease. It's simply not true. Expression pedal pots
in old organs are run CONSTANTLY up and down by the organists foot the
whole time it's being played, especially in spinet organs with one octave
of pedals for only the left foot. They pump those volume level pedals
even fast to get Leslie-like effects. The pots are the sealed, heavy use
types in "some" organs. Others, they're just pots with specially made-
for-that-model shaft lenghts that lock to a plate to keep them spinning
around pumped too hard. They all go through hell if the organist is
halfway decent.

I sprayed WD 40 into those sealed pots by removing the shell 10, 20, 30
years ago! They're still pumping them! Many of them, I never heard from
again and only checked the pots when I was fixing other problems with the
organs having their keys beaten off!

Not a single one of those pots was all gummed up with WD40 in all those
years. It's bunk.

 

[Smitty Two]

A bit of Googling on the subject of "WD-40 sticky" suggests that the
problem with stickiness developing, seems to involve use of too-large
amounts of WD-40 in situations where the lubricated device is exposed
to significant amounts of dust and dirt in use (e.g. pocket knives,
hand tools, etc). The residual oil (the nonvolatile part of WD-40) is
apparently rather viscous, and can be prone to pick up dust/dirt and
form a sticky sludge under these conditions.

I think it's just the opposite; stickiness developing from using *too
little* WD to flush out the dirt that was there to begin with. For
instance, a common use of the stuff if for locks, and there's a whole
militia of detractors who oppose that quite strongly. Yet in 40 years of
using it on all manner of locks, I've never had one go sticky on me
later. I spray copious amounts in, flushing everything out, then operate
the lock a dozen times, then spray in gobs more. Rinse and repeat.
Cleans and lubricates. More is better. No matter how much you use, only
one layer will remain after the volatiles are gone, so make sure that
layer is squeaky clean to start with.

 

[Phil Allison]

"Fred"

I was spending a fortune each year buying products like DeOxit to clean
organ controls, the thousands of metal to metal contacts before
everything became conductive rubber. Talking about the price of this
stuff, which would make you think a pharmaceutical company produced it in
a lab, he said something to me that simply shocked me.

"Hell, you're wasting your money on all that crap. I've been cleaning
hifi, PA and organ contacts with WD40, which is very cheap and easy to
find without going to the most expensive electronic repair company and
paying their exhorbitant prices. I've been doing it for lots of years
with no returns or complaints. I think because it leaves a lube residue
on anything it touches the contacts stayed cleaner because they weren't
exposed to the moisture in the air."

We both had to fight the horribly humid coastal swamp gas we live in, he
in NC and I in SC. So, I had some old organs that were just awful coming
up so I tried it. I used WD40 ever since with fantastic results. It
makes a 40 year old, almost worn out expression pedal pot work like new
with audio as smooth as glass. Some of those pots are nearly unobtanium
because of their queer shafts and mountings.

Another nice thing about WD40 is its effects upon dragging or frozen pot
bearings, of course. One drop in a pot bearing and you wonder why noone
did it instead of twisting off the knob!

The new WD40 isn't even flammable any more.

** The propellant gas changed to CO2 decades ago - but the mist and liquid
certainly are flammable if exposed to a flame or sufficient heat. The can is
labelled " Flammable Gas 2".

It is a very bad idea to spray copious amounts of WD40 onto an electrical
switchboards as sometimes fuse and switch contacts get very hot and will
ignite the liquid.

Other than that warning, the stuff is indefensible in the service workshop.
Practically all the griping about it comes from folk who have never tried at
all it or used it in very inappropriate ways.

Anecdote:
------------

A customer told me about an unfortunate incident he had with a can of
"contact cleaner". In order to self treat some intermittent fault in his
tube amp head - he introduced the spray via the input and speaker jack
holes. He pretty much used up the whole damn can. Then he switched on and
the inside of the amp instantly exploded into fames.

Like many such evaporative cleaners - the solvent was alcohol, the vapour of
which can ignites with a single spark.



..... Phil

 

[Phil Allison]

"Phil Allison"

Other than that warning, the stuff is indispensable in the service
workshop.

** I'll kill that damn spell checker...


.... Phil

 

[Phil Allison]

"Nutcase Kook "

Why is it everyone else gets corroded or dirty pots and I always get the
worn ones?

** Try working on some newer gear ....

Then there is the plague of microscopic Alps ones where the grease
migrates
from shaft area to the wiper area and lifts the hair-thin metal from the
no
sign of wear resistive track

** Are these the nice looking, 9mm square, green backed ones with metal
shafts and very smooth feel ?

http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/166/579/195/jewN.jpg




..... Phil