It seems like I keep damaging the pots when I'm rewiring them in my electric guitars or my amps. I'm assuming the heat from my soldering iron is wrecking them. But I'm surprised they would be so sensitive to heat. The hottest iron I use is 40 Watts.
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Actually, I AM talking about soldering the lugs. I don't think I'm applying the heat too long. But sometimes when I'm done, the pots don't work quite right. Sometimes they cut out while turning them. Replacing them always seems to work.
Recently, I had a pot on my guitar amp that I took out and put back in. When I was finished, the volume wouldn't turn off and the it didn't behave the same. So I replaced it with another pot then it worked fine.
Dirt.
Especially if you're using old, surplus, or recycled pots.
This kind of pot is notorious for intermittent connections. It isn't soldering heat, it's just crud between the element and wiper. Get some proper potentiometer cleaner spray, sometimes called contact cleaner, or contol cleaner, or the like - look for something guaranteed to leave no residue.
But just plain old ordinary dust in the air can cause this kind of behavior in potentiometers. (I'd have said "pots", but didn't want to open the thread to the bean cookers. ;-) )
Good Luck! Rich
Wrecking them how? How long are you applying heat for? It shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 seconds per joint.
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He's probably talking about soldering ground leads to the metal can of the pot for shielding. Using a 40W iron, it takes a long time to get the metal hot enough to solder to. He needs a trigger type gun in the
140W range. This will get the metal hot enough in short enough time to prevent damaging the pot. Of course the lugs only need the smaller iron.
I wonder if these might be conductive plastic pots? You might want to pry open one of the damaged ones and see what it looks like under the hood. If this doesn't tell you at a glance what is happening, you could then experiment by soldering the connector and watching what happens. If it's not actually melting the polymer, it might be causing it to exude something non-conductive to the surface.
Best regards,
Bob Masta dqatechATdaqartaDOTcom D A Q A R T A Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
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