APC40 Encoder Repair

[deevey]

Anyone got a lead on where these can be bought (at a reasonable price) a few of mine are starting to go ghostly on me .. already cleaned out with Compressed Air and Contact cleaner so guess they are past their sell-by date.

One guy on Ebay sells them for 6 bucks a pop (+$39 shipping) ..

I would have thought that they are "just encoders" sending A/B signals.. but Akai are using non-standard encoders with 4 pins rather than 3 (maybe just to be awkward ?)

Now if one of those Pins are "just for show" It would be great and I could just order a bunch of standard encoders for a buck a piece and be done with them all rather than be selective and choose the worst ones to replace (although there about 5 or 6 that are dodgy)

Anyone gone the route of repairing them ?

These are the ones from an APC btw

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Akai-APC-40-...item5d432b46a0

[ReggieUK]

Not sure about those, I suspect that they've just isolated the 2 signals from each other instead of a common pin on a normal 3 pin encoder
.
Does it have any other pins? the cheap ones you see on ebay usually have 3 pins on the front for the encoder A/B+Gnd and 2 pins on the back for the switch.

With the cheap ebay ones, you can take them apart just study the sides of the case, on mine there are 2 sets of metal 'tangs' on each side that secure the top 1/2 to the bottom, if you squeeze them together one at a time you should be able to take it apart and clean it up in there. When taking something like this apart, best to do it on a white sheet/towel/piece of paper, there is probably a ball bearing in there which makes it click as you turn.

[deevey]

The APC has no indents or pushbutton, pure encoder why I'm wondering if one of the pins is perhaps a dummy and could manage to get a regular one in there instead.

[ReggieUK]

there's one way to find out..... Get a meter out and see whether any pins are shorted, it could be that they really have isolated A/B from each other completely.

[deevey]

there's one way to find out..... Get a meter out and see whether any pins are shorted, it could be that they really have isolated A/B from each other completely.

Unfortunately it looks like the 4th pin is actually used in conjunction with the encoder ring lights

The good news is I have an MPK25 which has the same encoders and only utilizes 3 pins so I'm going to swap 6 of them across to the APC which is where I really need them more and see how it goes.

[deevey]

Ok after a bit of take apart devices madness and some searching it seems that these are actually endless 2.5k pots (not just encoders acting as pots as many peeps have assumed in the past).

Found an exact match but they aren't cheap

http://www.instrumentalparts.com/0-09-0044.html

[ReggieUK]

Glad you found your pots :-)