Cleaning vintage equipment

[victor]

Well maybe not exactly vintage but older, guess it depends on how each person sees it. Anyhow it's a Sansui 6060 which was manufactured in 1979. All the original labels are still located inside the unit to show manufacture date and test passed info. Many of the larger capacitors (mainly the main caps which are quite large) have numbers stamped in the top, which look like date format. If so they are original parts being the numbers all include '79. I'm sure it needs a very good cleaning as the tuner section and amplifier section were covered in dust. As were the main caps and main PS transformer. Some of the variable resistors on the front panel (bass, treble, volume etc.) look almost burned on the solder legs though. As well a few diodes on the amplifier section were in the same condition. I assume this is just really bad oxidation as simply wiping them with my finger "cleaned" them up a little. I'm thinking I should order up some DeoxIt spray to finish cleaning things up. Would that be a good way to go, or does that sound like something other than oxidation? I really would like to keep this reciever working as it sounds much better than my mini system and I've never had any problems with this reciever overheating or blowing fuses. Thanks if anyone can give some pointers.

[Dan B]

I work with a lot of 20 year old electronic equipment and the best thing to do is to just blow off the dust with an air gun. Do not lean anything with anything. Unless you have spilled a cup of coffee or soda on the equipment, don't touch it. There is a couple issues with old electronics. One is they like to be kept on all the time in order to not fail. We had an old technics receive that ran for over 20 years with-out ever being turned off. Most failures occur when the electronics cool off and then restart. There is often a voltage rush that kills things.
The other is the older capacitors leak and fail. So I would just blow it off and turn it on. Let it run for a couple days and see what happens.

Bob

[Steve H.]

For info on vintage solid state, including restoration, check out the vintage solid state forum at AudioKarma:

<A HREF="http://audiokarma.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=13">http://audiokarma.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=13</A>

Lots of good discussion there, along with some great photos of restored equipment.

Cheers

Steve

[unknownuser]

Would you recommend air only for noisy/scratchy volume/tone knobs?

> I work with a lot of 20 year old electronic
> equipment and the best thing to do is to
> just blow off the dust with an air gun. Do
> not lean anything with anything. Unless you
> have spilled a cup of coffee or soda on the
> equipment, don't touch it. There is a couple
> issues with old electronics. One is they
> like to be kept on all the time in order to
> not fail. We had an old technics receive
> that ran for over 20 years with-out ever
> being turned off. Most failures occur when
> the electronics cool off and then restart.
> There is often a voltage rush that kills
> things.
> The other is the older capacitors leak and
> fail. So I would just blow it off and turn
> it on. Let it run for a couple days and see
> what happens.

> Bob



(Originally posted by: gtwildwest)

[Dan B]

> Would you recommend air only for
> noisy/scratchy volume/tone knobs?

I've cleaned a couple volume controls ( pots ) using rubbing alcohol squirted into the actual insided, then rotate the knob. Then blow out the pot with an air gun. I use an ink jet syringe for squirting the alcohol. I would try this and if it does not work then, you are most likely forced to remove the pot and resolder a new one in its place. Bob