Chris Reitz dot Com

So I bought this really awesome Phonic MM1805X board off one of my buddies about a year and a half ago, and then moved three times. Well, somewhere during one of the moves, the main volume slider got bent up, and completely screwed up the volume control, so that it didn’t work half the time, and the other half of the time, it crackled when you moved the pot around.

For those who can't read really fuzzy cell phone photography, the model number is RS60112A600N.

I just ended up getting another board, but my band kind of needed a good studio board, so I figured I’d try fixing the volume slider. The worst that could happen is that I’d fry the already unusable board. The best that could happen is that I’d have a fully-functional board at the end of it.

The red box is where the new pot is (on the other side of the board). It's a little scuffed up from so many solderings and desolderings, but it works perfectly fine!

Well first I tried sticking two 10kΩ potentiometers in the corner, up by the main outs, and seeing if I could wire them up so they’d work. No such luck.

A few months later, I got my hands on an old Behringer board that had been hit by lighting, and I thought I’d pull one of the main sliders out of that (it had two, for left and right) and stick it in the Phonic. That sort of worked. Now I had the right channel of my board working. Better than nothing, but still, my band needed a full stereo main out. I mean, a rock band in mono would be kind of lame…

The new slider is the one on the far right. It's a slightly different color too.

finally (and this is almost a year later), I broke down and bought a new slider from Mouser for $4 (plus $7 shipping — OW!) and tore my board apart for the third time.  Just for the record, it’s an A-taper 10kΩ dual 60mm slider, made by Alps.

And then, with a couple screwdrivers, pliers, some patience, and a whole bunch of desoldering braid, I stuck the new pot in.

And of course, the last thing to do is to test the thing, then assemble.

Just a test of the board. Worked great through both left and right channels. Perfect.

And that about took care of it! It worked like a charm. Now to finish that relay rack….my buddy Tim wants to see that with some ‘Kahn Industries’ decals on it….I’ll have to see what I can arrange.