Vintage Synth Repair

In a message dated 5/7/05 3:19:14 AM, vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com 
writes:

<< just wanted to let y'all know how i fixed my mini!

i screwed off the bottom plate and inspected it... as i couldn't seen 
anything wrong i unplugged the connecter form the keyboard to the 
rest of the of the synth! it was really oxidiced, so i decided to try 
to clean it with some steelwool! after i did that and put everything 
baco together my minimoog is playing perfectly again!!!!

i decided to go ahead and do the same thing with all the connectors! 
it made my mini less noisy and more stable! >>

Holy crap!  You're scaring us, Dan.  Don't EVER try to clean the keyboard 
contacts with steel wool or with any other type of abrasive material.  If you do, 
you WILL ruin the keyboard permanently.  It's probably OK that you cleaned 
those connectors with the abrasive, although you may wind up having to clean 
them more and more often now that you have rubbed away the precious metal 
surface, and you may have more tuning difficulties as a result.  

Get some Caig De-Oxit contact cleaner and spray a very small amount onto 
those connector parts.  Use a cotton swab ("Q-Tip", or similar) to rub it around, 
and work the male and female parts back and forth several times.  That should 
help them a bit.  

Now pay attention:

DO NOT spray the Caig De-Oxit onto the keyboard contact buss bars or contact 
springs, and DO NOT ever try to clean those key contact busses or springs with 
anything abrasive (steel wool???  are you nuts?  It's a Minimoog, not an 
Oldsmobile...).  If your key contacts ever start acting strange (and they will at 
some time - trust me), do some serious research before you go in there to work 
on them - the information on how to properly clean them is out there on the 
web.  If you ruin the key contacts or springs, you will NEVER be able to 
replace them.

Michael Bacich
(former factory-authorized Moog service technician)