Me and another friend played a house party the other weekend, we has 2xVCI -100s going at once and a lot of fun doing it, plus the guests seemed to enjoy the music, so that’s always a bonus.
However at one point in the night a bit of alcohol got spilled on my VCI… we noticed and cleaned it up right then and there, but it was a very sweet (thus sticky) drink and now my right deck volume fader has become almost unusable. It’s stiff to slide, feels a bit grimey when sliding and traktor doesn’t detect the motions properly.
So does anyone have any experience cleaning volume faders?
I was thinking taking it apart, pulling the fader out and using some spray on degreaser (since it’s non-conductive) to try and fix it.
Does anyone else know of anything that may work?
Do vestax sell replacement parts at all? or has anyone got a broken VCI and wants to sell me their volume fader?
Any help appreciated, and in return i present you with a picture of the setup from the night.
I had this happen to a laptop of mine once. Fortunately, it only affected the keyboard, but in a very similar way to your VCI.
I simply unscrewed the keyboard and put it 2 or three times through VERY hot water. It melted the sticky stuff off perfectly, and the keyboard was as good as new after being stuck in a nice warm spot over night to dry.
Unscrew the back plate, lift it off, unscrew the screws above/below the fader on faceplate. Then (trust me) eye shadow brush and some nail varnish remover, wipe it around inside the fader paying attention to far edges. Had to do that with mine after a paint related spill. Works fine now.
Great thing with nail varnish remover is it’s designed to evaporate quickly so won’t build up like water and require drying.
[QUOTE]Sorry to be no help whatsoever on you stick spillage, but can i ask how you run two vci’s and a usb sound card on your macbook?
I have the allumium macbook (2 usb slots) and want to add an akai to my vci setup and would be very interested any advice you can give.
cheers Michael[/QUOTE]
Simple, USB hub.
I bought a cheap one from ebay, think it cost me $5 posted and arrived in under a week from China. While it’s not as aesthetically pleasing as some of the more expensive ones, it does the trick. The only problem i’ve noticed is it doesn’t seem to like having both VCI’s plugged into it at once, however 1xVCI, sounds card and ext HDD or flash drive is no worries.
Hmm sounds like a reasonable idea, I’ll give that a shot next weekend when I have some spare time.
My major concern at the moment is not the stickyness, rather the fact that traktor doesn’t detect the movements of the slider properly, i’m not sure if this is because there’s gunk in there which can be cleaned out; or if the liquid that got in there has fried it for good…
Would dumping the removed fader componet in hot water be such a wise idea? I’m not too familiar with how the fader works, but my initial thoughts would be electrical component + water = bad idea…
What ever you decide to do, do it sooner rather than later. The longer you leave it the more damage will occur from corrosion. Distilled water is always a safe way of cleaning electronics - just leave it somewhere warm and dry before you plug it back in.
My money is on the fact that the sticky stuff left over has caused a short, and fubar’d your slider. A good clean should sort it, assuming you can get deep enough inside the slider to do so.
I’m leaning towards removing the slider, heating up some distilled water in a saucepan and carefully submersing the slider component in there.
Good idea / Bad idea?
Quick update for all those interested;
Simply dropping the unit in a cup of warm demineralised water for about 10-15 minutes has removed all sticky residue; so the unit slides as it did when it was new and traktor now reads to inputs correctly again, woo!
I clean my faders by using some alcohol, preferable the less distilled the better. Then i get a small paint bruch and brush the bottom on the fader casing. Wait for it to dry and then use a can of compressed air to dry or remove any dirt particles in the bottom. Worked for me!
