How to clean Audio Faders

Over time, audio faders get dry and dirty, this results in scratchy faders that after a while will start to fail. In this video, I clean an Audio Fader the hard way, by disassembling it and cleaning each component one by one.

The back story.

I bought an Akai DPS16 and while it was in relatively good condition, both physically and cosmetically, the faders (ALPS RS Series) were dried out and scratchy and some weren't working at all. So I decided to replace them, the only problem being that none of the big electronics stores stocked these exact faders and there was no real way to modify new faders to work either. So this left me with only one option, to disassemble them, clean them and then reassemble them. This video was taken on one of the last faders I cleaned and I go through the process I went through.

This is not a definitive guide, I am sure there are many that may argue the procedure and obviously doing this to your own faders is at your own risk. This said, all my faders came out perfect and faders that were not working before came back to life and work perfectly, so the process has worked for me.

If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe. I restore and repair a lot of vintage gear so i'll be uploading more videos as I finish these projects.

Here are some of the items I used in the video:

CAIG DeoxIT Faderlube F5S-H6 - https://tinyurl.com/y3esz4cp
Servisol Super 10 - https://tinyurl.com/yxnqmlby

The music is my own, you can listen to more here -   / ianholdendc