Dat recording, Cleaning pots etc.

[D Charles]

I just re did the front room in our house and it's pretty empty, so me and my sweetie decided to just record some. The room is like 16 X 16 and around 10' ceiling. So I've got this old portable dat which is a Casio DA-100 I think it is. So I set up my AT 822 stereo mic and plugged it into the dat, grabbed my Martin acoustic and we just did a bunch of covers and originals.

 

So we go back to listen and there's cutting out. The soundstage moves from the middle to the right in places etc. I noticed that when I'd turn the mic input little itty bitty pot on the dat it was scratchy as hell and would make the left and right go funny as I turned it. I need to clean this guy.

 

I've checked some stuff and seems like there are plastic conductive and metal conductive parts and you use different stuff to clean them. I have no idea how to tell what is what in my old dat.

 

On hand I've got some LPS-2, some Caig Cailube MCL (for plastic moving conductors) and those little deoxit bottles of red and blue stuff.

 

Just wondering if someone can give me a tutorial of cleaning those little tiny round circles sticking out of my porta dat that are input volume and headphone volume which have gone all scratchy.

 

Thanks!

[Anderton]

First, rotate them several dozen times over their full travel. Some pots have self-wiping contacts, and all you need to do is work them a lot to get them back to their normal state.