Diagnosing Crackle From Fender Rhodes Amplifier

Video Transcript

This is Larin Parker with Expert Village and we're taking a look at a Fender Rhodes amplifier. Basically the whole bottom section of this instrument is typical of most any older amplifier. From about the sixties, seventies or early eighties. We've already diagnosed that the hum is probably coming from these paper capacitors, I just replaced them, see if it goes away, but the source of the crackle is going to be a little more enigmatic. These older instruments have a lot more connections to them that need to be plugged in. Although these look pretty good, they're nice and shiny, they don't have any corrosion around them. You really need to make sure things are fitting tightly. If I look at where this connects up and I remember from when I disassembled it, you want to make sure that the connections are tight because it's going to be physical movements vibrating on things that cause these crackling noises. If this were just barely hanging on there, then that would probably create a crackle. Likewise I've got another here and these guys as well. These tin plated connections that connect up to the power supply here. They need to be nice and clean. As long as I have this open, I'm probably going to take some of my denatured alcohol and I'm just going to scrub this stuff down and when you have surfaces that can't be damaged, not really a circuit board but it's just an area where there?s a good hearty metal. A lot of these older instruments are very forgiving because they use lots of good strong metal and bolts and things. You can also use a slightly abrasive sponge to clean it and that will clean it a little bit faster. Be sure that you use a hundred percent alcohol like denatured alcohol instead of using rubbing alcohol which can leave a residue or heaven forbid using water or four o' nine which will definitely leave a residue. So basically just to get rid of that crackle, I'm going to do that. The other thing that I showed was that when I turned those controls, we got a little bit of crackle. In areas where I can't reach, it's nice to get a can of contact cleaner, the one that I'm most familiar with is a brand call Deoxit, and you can get that from various radio stores and suppliers, you spray it into components like this switch for instance and you just let it sit there and it leaves a slightly conductive coating on it and gives it a little bit of lubrication and cleaning on the inside. Also helps to just switch the switch up and down as the contact cleaner sort of works its way in.

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