The best "deal" is the 100% stuff in the bottle with the needle nozzle. It'll
work for almost everything.

Almost. It might be hard to inject in some pots, where a spray would be better.
So you should also have some of the spray stuff.

A thirty plus year old pot is well past it's design lifetime. Replacement is
the best approach for real performance.

If you must "clean" it, I recommend the deoxit gold stuff. 2 or 5% spray.
It's not as reactive as the red, and therefore it won't cause longterm erosion
of the wiper contact.

Good luck.

phillip sztenderowicz

wrote:
Which Deoxit should I use to clean a noisy potentiometer in a Marantz
70's vintage receiver?

Try the Cailube.

I have a small bottle of DeoxIT D100L-25C which is the red stuff with
the needle nozzle.

Would this be the correct stuff or do I need something else?

That stuff will wreck conductive plastic pots, so they recommend not to
use it on pots. It's actually fine on old carbon pots like the ones from
the seventies.

The Cailube, though, will give you smoother operation and keep the pot
quieter over the long run. Don't forget to check the blocking capacitors
for leakage too.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 18:34:34 -0500, wrote:

My main concern is to NOT upset the nice smooth, somewhat damped feeling
of the control by using the wrong kind of cleaner.

I remember destroying the pots on an old tape deck I had circa 1980 with
some Radio Shack Tuner/Lube and while it did fix the crackling, it made
the pot feel loose and grainy.

Never ever use tuner cleaner on anything, even tuners. It's the
spawn of the devil. Cailube MCL is excellent, but even lowly LPS-1
will work, and will not harm anything.

Chris Hornbeck

"I expect a black silence that is almost as violent as laughter."
Jean Cocteau, 1932

In article writes:

My main concern is to NOT upset the nice smooth, somewhat damped feeling
of the control by using the wrong kind of cleaner.

If you spray a cleaner into a control, it will clean the oil that's
giving it that damped feeling. If you want to preserve that, you'll
have to disassemble the control and just clean the contact surface.
Hard to do with a sealed pot, but usually possible with a slider.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

BTW the control only makes a little noise when turning it.
Otherwise it is quiet and I don't lose signal or anything like that.


I'd take scott's advice, and look for leakage on the input to the pot. Could
be a slightly leaking decoupling cap. If they are electrolytics, they are due
to be replaced anyway....see a theme here?

But if the pot is only slightly noisey when turning, it seems as though it's
holding up OK. A tiny spritz of caig gold, or cailube will probably clean that
up....you never want to spraaayyyyy lots into your pot, because as you noticed,
you wash all of the lube out, and then the pot feels crappy.

As for replacement, it depends, is it a volume? I haven't worked on consumer
gear in ages: I'd start by looking at Antique Electronics, Mouser Stocks some
Clarostat Carbons I believe, or if you really want good vintage:try Leed's
Electronics. http://www.leedselect.com/ Antique and Mouser are on the web
too.

Good luck. Replace those electrolytics! It will sound like a new unit.
Beyschlag makes axials still, Digikey sells 'em. www.digikey .com.

cheers,
Phil