Moog Music Forum

One has to answer the question that if Deoxing products are so good, why don't most switches and pots come pretreated from the factory?

In my past experience with Caig products such as Cramolin, I found the chemical could get between base metal and contact plating and eat the base metal away.
Base metal is often copper.
The residue was always green, despite Cramolin being clear.
Anyone into metallurgy will know that copper causes the color green.
So how did some of the copper react with this chemical and cause it to turn green?
So what I figured that these chemicals (especally by their company descriptions) are lightly corrosive at worst, attractants of dust at best.

A new switch doesn't need deoxiding or any treatment at all and that's the goal of restoration: to put things back as they were new.
So I avoid things that were never there in the first place, one namely being Caig products, deoxit included.

I went with the Teccnology Transplant kit with all the switches and new sliders. Was a bargain when I purchased many years ago. I think I received the first proto-type kit for the Opus 3 and was asked if it worked OK. All the sliders and switches act as new now. Really was not that difficult to do. Took an evening to desolder and remount the new parts. De-gunked it, re-capped it, modded it and refinished it. Should be good for another twenty years.
Here is the board, all cleaned up.

And the final outcome. Sounds great, my favorite stringer!

mhuxtable wrote:What's so bad about deoxit? Every amp tech I know uses it....

And how do you get inside the pots and sliders to spray stuff in?

The goal is not to get the spray into the pots, it's to get the dirt out of the pots.

Believe me, you can shoot almost anything into a pot (WD-40, cooking spray, etc) and it will quiet it up for a short time.
It'll clean some things that way and move around the dirt.
But to me it's like adding new car oil continuously instead of changing the oil and using fresh.

I get the dirt out of many pots by actually immersion washing the boards.
Done properly, I've found it's the best method.
It actually flushes all the dirt, hairs and other gunk out instead of just moving it around.
Then I dry and relube them.
Done this so many times I can't recall and with great success.
For example, I just took an Odyssey where the sliders wouldn't even budge, gave everything a bath, dried and lubed it and it's all working smoothly and properly.

What kind of "bath" do you make for an electronic circuit board???

mhuxtable wrote:What kind of "bath" do you make for an electronic circuit board???

Distilled water rinse. Usually done in his bathtub.

I use a bathtub, flexible spray nozzle, SimpleGreen Detergent and water processed by a water softener.
To dry, an air compressor with a moisture trap or high speed fan drying.
I'm in the desert- it doesn't take long to dry things.
The soft water cleans better and removes the need for distilled water in my case.
I may also use Tarn-X tarnish remover in a separate step for tarnished silver contacts.
This stuff is very important to rinse off or it can cause even more problems.

There are things to avoid with water also- transformers, certain types of capacitors and ICs (no ceramic body types), certain bulb and switches.
One doesn't want to hit high resistance (1 megaohm or higher) open pots with powerful jets of hot water either.
The resistive coating is thin and can come off under these circumstances. No high pressure air on them either.

I've bathed Moog modulars, Arp 2500s, Buchlas, Minis, Odys, PPGs and all sorts of synths without problems, but don't recommend doing it unless one's prepared and confident.
I have some videos on YouTube showing an Odyssey getting bathed.
There's only two types of comments: Great... I tried it... wonderful AND you're crazy, nuts, clueless, etc.

Kevin Lightner wrote:But to me it's like adding new car oil continuously instead of changing the oil and using fresh.

There's nothing wrong with that, if your '92 Subaru POS leaks oil. Better for the engine, since you never have old oil, great for the environment as well, since you are dispersing the pollutants rather than dumping them all in one place.

I'm sure we'll all breathe easier knowing your old oil isn't all in one place.

I have an old Opus 3 that was completly inoperable a few years back; black goop everywhere...This may not be recommended, but what I did was stripped it down to just the circuit board and then stuck it in the dishwasher. That's right! The dishwasher. With dishwasher soap. When it was done, all the black goop was gone and the board was totally clean. I then let it completely dry in the sun. Then I blew it dry with a hair dryer just to be sure there's no moisture in the pots, sliders, or switches which were then treated with a mild cleaner/lubricant. With plenty of light and a magnifying glass I re-soldered any suspect solder connections. I re-built the power supply replacing all the electrolytic capacitors. I also re-furbed the keyboard. This Opus works like it just came from the factory. My only problem is, somewhere along the way, I lost/missplaced/threw out the pitch-wheel assembly. I have the wheel; I don't have the pot and mounting bracket. I was going to sell it, but it's incomplete. I guess someday I'll make one - no big deal. I have never used this keyboard as i'm not crazy about what it does or how it sounds. I'm more of a Memorymoog / T1 kind of a guy; MM+, LAMM, Taurus 1. These boards give me the sound I look for in the analog realm. This dishwasher thing also worked on an old orange juice coated ARP Odessey. This board wouldn't 'range up' and the scaling was unadjustable. After the dishwashing there was plenty of adjustment and it became tuneable. This keyboard also works like new, (a couple of snapped-off slider shafts) although it doesn't look it, and, I never use it. So, I have had good results using the dishwasher. You might want to try an ultra sonic bath with alcohol. This is the way I would have gone had I owned or had access to one at the time.
Cheers

Great reading

Interesting read, Synthguy1.

Although one thing stands out from your post; on both occasion, after you had gone to the trouble of doing all that cleaning and fixing work, you said that you don't use either one of those synths ?

Maybe if you did, you would encounter glitchy switches and pots after a short while... Not only that, but the smooth feel of silicone lubricant on pots shafts must be gone by now ?

Moreover, most dishwasher soaps contains powerful bleaching agents that can make some exposed metal parts rust and oxidize really fast.

Even though you say you've obtained satisfactory results, I'd prefer to use mild, non-abrasive, soap and water in a bath, over the dishwasher method...

Congrats on the Opus 3 - it's one of my favorite stringers, if for the brass section alone.

With regards to PCB cleaning, I am currently working on an ARP Quadra with some sticky sliders. All of them work, but they are gummy and sluggish, almost oily to the touch. I am too under-equipped to perform the Lightner Bath Wash(TM), so I decided to experiment by dropping a teensy bit of Caig CaiLube MCL moving contact lubricant into one of the sliders. It did free things up, but some of the smoothness is now gone. The slider moves easily but now feels kind of scratchy, a little too metal-on-metal for my tastes. I'm wondering if there is anything else I can do to make it move more smoothly, perhaps something oil or silicone-based?