Taking an S4 apart
Hi!
I’m wondering is anyone has taken an NI S4 apart?
Guide, pictures. What not to do?
What is in there? 200 awesome smurfs?
I have but i didnt take pics.
Its pretty crammed in there, very little to see unless you take the main board out.
The one i took apart was a pre-production beta model so it didnt matter about the warranty but ive got a full production model now so i aint taking this apart.
Not very helpful sorry 
Goddamnit Karlos…were there any smurfs!!!
Answer the man’s question.
Well…
Anything you guys want to know? 
The headphone pcb has to be removed vertical as it is slotted in the case.
To take the PCB’s out of the case you have to peel off the front bezels as the important knobs is bolted to the casing with nuts.
The pictures was taken to keep track of where the wires goes.
We talked about that you could be creative with a dremel and remove the front plate around the shaft. You need a hole around 12-13 mm to release the nut. The nut is 11mm.
ALL knobs are bolted - making the S4 knobs just as sturdy as the A&H K2 was praised for.
This S4 is long gone - it had a few drinks to many 
[ame=“S4 | Flickr”]S4 - a set on Flickr[/ame]
This will help in my project…TONS of wasted pcb…what were they thinking? Is the piece of pcb in the bottom of the picture posted removable/how much room is between the two layers of circuit board.
I am not really sure what you mean.
The top PCB in the “sample” shot is the control pcb. You can’t alter that one.
It’s an art form to make PCB layout with close to zero electrical noise issues… So don’t just something based on looks – there might be a reason for it.
Great pictures. However, I cannot see that the knobs/encoders are mounted with screw nuts like they are on the K2. The pots on my S2/S4 are not fixed to the top plate and they are wobbly.
I’ll shoot some pictures of the front also before i put this together again.
You cant see the nuts as they are underneath the frontplate/bezel. To acces them you have to pry the bezel off with a large blade or something. It is glued heavily to the case
There is maybe 1cm between the two layers of pcb.
As you can see there is plenty of room for innofader erc..
Possibly strength but that’s alot of wasted cost…and i know its an artform, but I would assume military grade PCBs have higher quality testing than the kontrol s4…if I remember correctly, it was a few years ago though 
Zster, if you just spilt beer on it then you should try to take it apart further and bake the PCB…theres alot of tutorials online about it and its saved multiple laptop motherboards.
I mean theres no hurt in trying.
Thanks for taking pics for us! Question: Is there enough room in between the top plastic and the pcb underneath to fit an air can straw? I wonder if this would help to clean out the tiny buttons on the effect units that can sometimes get stuck.
There is around 0.5 cm space. Haven’t measured it though. But yes a straw from a compressed air can can get in there
I will charge my camera and take some more shots when i get back at our warehouse thursday.
Im a little bummed that there isn’t more free space…I was planning on making my new cad model really slim, thought it would be a nice take on dj equipment, almost like the thickness of a macbook, looks like it would be near impossible though since the pots take up quite a bit of room
HI GUYS
Take a look at my S4 set on Flickr.. I just found some more pictures from the assembly..
[ame=“S4 | Flickr”]S4 - a set on Flickr[/ame]