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Post subject: bad pot
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:12 am
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Location: chicago
hi everyone, i asked this on a reply to someone then i figured i would ask here as well. the master volume pot is real noisy, i've opened the amp up and sprayed contact cleaner in it and it helped a little for a little while.
my question is, how much of a big deal is it to change and can i order a pot from somewhere?
i do all my own guitar maintenance and do the bias on my hot rod deville so i'm pretty half way decent with this stuff and it would cost way too much to have a tech do it.
any suggestions?


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Post subject: Re: bad pot
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 2:23 am
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Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:31 am
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Location: Province de Québec, Canada
Pot for wich amp ? Hot Rod Deville ?

If you don't use good quality contact cleaner like Deoxit , job might be not well done.
You have to turn pot at least 10 times and more to clean it.

More answer if you post in amps section


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Post subject: Re: bad pot
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 2:28 am
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Location: Province de Québec, Canada
Fender pots

http://www.amprepairparts.com/pots.htm


http://darrenriley.com/product-category ... tiometers/

http://www.guitarpartsresource.com/amp_electrical.htm


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Post subject: Re: bad pot
Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2016 5:35 am
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First and foremost, I do have to agree with the suggestion that you may not have gotten it clean the first time...there's clean and then there's clean. I've used the spray stuff (CRC I think) for light scratchy pots and most of the time it does a really good job...I smoke, I tend to play in a rather musty basement...yea, I need to clean pots from time to time and the spray stuff works pretty well. That said, for really noisy pots, I've taken those into my tech...he actually uses some kind of ultasound cleaner or something...just vibrates the crap right out of them (literally).

As to replacing a pot yourself...from my own experience, that tends to depend on the amp. Like the OP, I do have some fair to moderate repair and electrical skills, do my own repairs on my guitar and such, etc.. With older amps (or newer amps that are wired like older amps) where you have a real pot mounted to the face plate with wires soldered to it...that's no different from changing out a pot on a guitar. MANY amps these days however have pots that are soldered directly to a circuit board...often they can be a serious pain to get at and that can take a more experienced touch. Unless you have experience using a soldering iron on a circuit board, in this case my advice would be don't do it...or, at the very least, get some old scrap circuit boards to practice on FIRST. I really doesn't take much at all to damage a circuit board with a soldering iron...and in many cases you can have components OTHER than the pot (resisters, caps, etc) right around the pot itself. I'd suggest to pot the amp apart and take a look then decide for yourself if you feel it's a job you can actually handle based on your own skill level.

On that same note...if we are in fact talking about a genuinely "bad" pot and not one that's just excessively dirty...say a pot that's be burned due to excessive voltage or something, it might be worth taking the amp into a tech anyways, to find out what caused the problem, instead of just treating the symptoms.



Please know that I'm -NOT- a tech and these are simply my own opinions, so please take them with the appropriate grain of proverbial salt.

Good Luck!


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Post subject: Re: bad pot
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 4:06 pm
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I agree about those that are experienced in soldering versus those who dabble.

Although, I sometimes used the soldering irons that were constantly plugged in at work, as opposed to giving the techs more work than they needed, I too found the error of my ways. I once heated a wire that led to a hair size wire that overheated and pretty much vaporized to my astonishment. :shock:
Big difference between the expensive regulated soldering irons at work and the one that destroyed my expensive 4 channel headphones. I do know to redirect the heat away from the area in question, but that disappearing attached wire was pretty much invisible to the naked eye.

0h, did I mention the boards that were thrashed by my skill set. And I'm really not that bad all things considered. So some things are best left to the pros IMHO. YMMV.

FSB

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