In praise of contact cleaner

[rockstar_not]

Local FB marketplace ad for a 65W Peavey Express 112 for $35.  I'm an amp sim guy and have been since 1999 when I sold a 100W combo tube amp to help my purchase of the Larry in my signature.

Took my guitar and cable and an extension cable. Plugged in and turned down the gains. Selected clean channel and strummed then reached for the gain and it went from silence to full strength and a bunch of crackle. I'm thinking a pot replacement. Several other pots also scratchy.

She says: can it be fixed?  I said I was pretty sure it could but I didn't need another project at the moment, which is true.  She said  just take it, everyone else who responded to the ad didn't show up.  I told her it was probably worth something, but I didn't know how much time it would take someone to fix it. She insisted I take it.

Found a YouTube video of a guy with the same amp and issues who had to desolder the pots from the board to get contact cleaner in there to work. I found accessible ports on all the scratchy pots and used up about a quarter can of contact cleaner on the scratchy pots and it fixed them all. No removal of the pots was necessary. Contact cleaner was something like $6.99 at harbor freight. Not a bad price for a made in USA amp! Dang it's pretty loud as well. Clean channel sounds really nice. Lead channel not so much.

[unclrob]

  Contact cleaner is your friend.I can't tell you how many time's someone will show up saying there pots need replacing when all they need is a cleaning including your jack.Hope alll pay attention.

[ducktrapper]

Contact cleaner and canned air are great products. Almost up there with WD40 and duct tape. Especially, if in a smoker's house. That **** gets into and gums up everything.

[flatlander]

Yep. Amp probably sat around forever not being used. Sometimes a little contact cleaner will fix right up.

[Gottaplay]

Just picked up an my first acoustic amp a Yorkville AM100 really similar to the current Traynor AM Studio. Scratchy pots are no big surprise given it's around 15 years old. I`ve watched several Youtube vids on correct use of contact cleaner  to clean out the pots and will be doing that soon. The more troubling concern is an apparently none functioning push button activate/defeat switch for the digital effects. The effects are always on regardless of which position that switch is in i.e. the button clicks in and out but the effects are always on. I dial down the effects levels to zero (dry) and set it to reverb and can't discern any sound alteration but would like to get the amp working 100%.

Anyone out there try contact cleaner on something like this? I know you need to take extra care not to overspray components such as capacitors but I`m no amp tech. That being said I`m more than willing to give it a go. The amp was only $100 and the newer version goes for $750.

[rockstar_not]

Is the switch accessible to unsolder it from the rest of the amp?  Could be an easy fix if so.

[Gottaplay]

Hiya Rockstar-Not...hope you don'y mid my resurrecting your thread.

Yeah I`m thinking that's the next move. Haven't yet pulled the head out to gain access to the backside of the pots but my current thinking is to blow out then use cleaner on the entire set of controls. Is compressed air prior to contact cleaner a good practise?

The amp is cutting out periodically which I`m hoping is related to dirty pots. My cables don't make any noise and the battery for my on board K&K Trinity is new so that would make the amp the likely cause.