potentiometer refurbishing

If you'd like to send us your potentiometer for service send an email to midnightguitarrepair@gmail.com.

Our premiere vintage and rare potentiometer refurbishing service provides new life to worn out or damaged potentiometers and some switches. Our goal is to maintain originality to vintage and rare pieces. We do this by throughly cleaning each potentiometer and only replacing the exact parts that need to be replaced inside a potentiometer. Common failures we repair include: broken shafts, frozen pots, dead spots, crackling, missing legs, and perpecual spining. Our services become especially helpful for potentiometers that are no longer manufactured with the original value, taper, or shaft.

OUR PROCESS

We begin by examining the overall condition of the potentiometer. We make note of: the manufacturer, the date of manufacture, and the ohmic value and the taper of the potentiometer. We also make note of: the material, style, and thread height of the shaft.
Here we have a potentiometer made by CTS (Chicago Telephone Supply) on the 36th week of 1966. This is a 1 megaohm potentiometer with audio taper. Its shaft is made of nylon, its solid with no knurling, and has a thread height of 3/8".

Next we clean all excess solder on the potentiometer. We do this using a soldering iron, solder sucker, solder wick, and then clean off the pot with a flux removing spray. We remove any bits of wire, solder, and crud from the potentiometer's legs. We then straighten out all of the legs. We then proceed to disassemble the potentiometer.

We begin the disassembly process by gently removing the metal tabs that hold the back of the pot to the rest of the components. We then carefuly remove as many parts as possible without damaging anything. All parts are checked for wear. All parts, esspecially the carbon pad on the wafer and the wiper, are cleaned with a high quality contact cleaner. Pots with excessive dirt and corrision are gently scrubbed clean.

All damaged parts are replaced with parts from a new donor pot (of the same manufacturer is possible). The potentiometer is reassembled and checked with an DMM for smooth operation and to ensure there are no dead spots throughout the pots travel.

The owner the pot is then emailed a detailed receipt along with a paypal invoice with the charges for the service ($30), parts, and return shipping and handling. The owner of the pot has his/her choice of return shipping.