The restoration of a Yamaha CA-2000 (Japanese CA-2010)

All points taken into account, guys. No more glasfiber pens. Yesterday I tested a switch with the pencil eraser combined with de-oxit 100 and I must say I'm pretty impressed with the results.

I was planning on only cleaning and preserving the slider parts, but it looks like the old brown grease of the mechanical parts has found it’s way into the slider parts. So I cleaned the entire switch and I will regrease the mechanical parts with ceramic grease.

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These switches are made out of silver and they oxidize black in the presence of sulfur dioxide (more of this stuff in coal burning states or wood burning for heat areas, you're body also releases more as you get older, lol). The contact is made out of brass. Silver prices early in the 1970s were not that high (used in our currency) but later climbed due to getting off the gold standard. In the 80s, manufacturers stated to use gold plating to eliminate oxidation on high end units.

I also disassemble and then clean with d100 and faderlube.
 
These switches are made out of silver and they oxidize black in the presence of sulfur dioxide (more of this stuff in coal burning states or wood burning for heat areas, you're body also releases more as you get older, lol). The contact is made out of brass. Silver prices early in the 1970s were not that high (used in our currency) but later climbed due to getting off the gold standard. In the 80s, manufacturers stated to use gold plating to eliminate oxidation on high end units.

I also disassemble and then clean with d100 and faderlube.

This is correct. Most of the slide selectors switches and rotary switches and their moving contacts pieces (and some relay contacts) in quality gear were silver plated. The black is the silver oxide.

By far the easiest way to clean them is this:

Remove and dismantle them completely.

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With a cotton tip, wipe liquid Silvo (NOT Brasso) metal polish along the contact rails a few times. No pressure or rubbing needed. It is not an abrasive cleaner. Leave the Silvo on the contacts.

Put all the parts in a small ultrasonic cleaner with hot water and a few drops of dishwashing detergent for about 1 minute.
Take it all* out, rinse and dry with a hairdryer.
Lubricate the parts that need lube
Wipe the now pristine contacts with your favorite contact enhancer.
Reassemble and install.

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The ultrasonic cleaner gets absolutely everything out of the impossible to reach parts and leaves all the surfaces spotless.

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You can clearly see the silver plating on the actual slide contact surfaces after ultrasonic cleaning. They look fabulous and there is absolutely no loss of the precious metal contact.

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There you go guys.

*count the parts in and out of your ultrasonic cleaner- you don't want to pour a contact down the drain...
 
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This is correct. Most of the slide selectors switches and rotary switches and their moving contacts pieces (and some relay contacts) in quality gear were silver plated. The black is the silver oxide.

By far the easiest way to clean them is this:

Remove and dismantle them completely.

View attachment 1103163

View attachment 1103164

View attachment 1103165

View attachment 1103166

View attachment 1103167

View attachment 1103168

With a cotton tip, wipe liquid Silvo (NOT Brasso) metal polish along the contact rails a few times. No pressure or rubbing needed. It is not an abrasive cleaner. Leave the Silvo on the contacts.

Put all the parts in a small ultrasonic cleaner with hot water and a few drops of dishwashing detergent for about 1 minute.
Take it all* out, rinse and dry with a hairdryer.
Lubricate the parts that need lube
Wipe the now pristine contacts with your favorite contact enhancer.
Reassemble and install.

View attachment 1103169

The ultrasonic cleaner gets absolutely everything out of the impossible to reach parts and leaves all the surfaces spotless.

View attachment 1103170

View attachment 1103171

You can clearly see the silver plating on the actual slide contact surfaces after ultrasonic cleaning. They look fabulous and there is absolutely no loss of the precious metal contact.

View attachment 1103172

There you go guys.

*count the parts in and out of your ultrasonic cleaner- you don't want to pour a contact down the drain...
true that and I tried it (ultrasonc cleaner) in in most case does wonders. ...one problem tho, with the printed resistors on those disks I posted above.....did not want those "cleaned":biggrin:
 
This is correct. Most of the slide selectors switches and rotary switches and their moving contacts pieces (and some relay contacts) in quality gear were silver plated. The black is the silver oxide.

By far the easiest way to clean them is this:

Remove and dismantle them completely.

View attachment 1103163

View attachment 1103164

View attachment 1103165

View attachment 1103166

View attachment 1103167

View attachment 1103168

With a cotton tip, wipe liquid Silvo (NOT Brasso) metal polish along the contact rails a few times. No pressure or rubbing needed. It is not an abrasive cleaner. Leave the Silvo on the contacts.

Put all the parts in a small ultrasonic cleaner with hot water and a few drops of dishwashing detergent for about 1 minute.
Take it all* out, rinse and dry with a hairdryer.
Lubricate the parts that need lube
Wipe the now pristine contacts with your favorite contact enhancer.
Reassemble and install.

View attachment 1103169

The ultrasonic cleaner gets absolutely everything out of the impossible to reach parts and leaves all the surfaces spotless.

View attachment 1103170

View attachment 1103171

You can clearly see the silver plating on the actual slide contact surfaces after ultrasonic cleaning. They look fabulous and there is absolutely no loss of the precious metal contact.

View attachment 1103172

There you go guys.

*count the parts in and out of your ultrasonic cleaner- you don't want to pour a contact down the drain...
Awesome info Restorer John and you have a great camera :thumbsup: Thanks!

Edit: @restorer-john, so you don't remove all the dirty goo befor putting the parts in the untrasonic cleaner? And what kind of untrasonic do you have? The cheap one I have doesn't work that well.
 
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Made some more progress yesterday. First one picture of the final result of the first switch done according to the precious metal care rules :p

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After that I finished the most difficult board of the CA-2000, the meter board :beatnik:

Again, everything replaced, except the carbon resistors and two FET's. Resoldered everything and some deep cleaning.

Before:

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After:

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Switch:

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Glad I could help. I've been using this method for years and felt it was time to share it. You'll never go back to a manual method, except of course with 'printed' resistor volume and tone pots.

....Awesome info Restorer John and you have a great camera :thumbsup: Thanks!...

The camera is actually an old Canon Ixus 70. They have a phenomenal close up mode- good for electronics porn. Find one at your local thrift for a few dollars.

...so you don't remove all the dirty goo befor putting the parts in the untrasonic cleaner? And what kind of untrasonic do you have? The cheap one I have doesn't work that well...

You can hit it with contact cleaner and drop it in the ultrasonic cleaner first if you like. Then just replace the water for the contact cleaning cycle.

I tried a few ultrasonic cleaners and lucked out on a small jewelry one that has more power than most. You'll have to try a few. I think its cool that we are using sound to clean sound reproduction equipment- ironic huh?
 
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One other thing you will easily notice (and can measure) after this type of work is the vast improvement in cross-talk and bleed-through in selectors. The grease and various metal oxides that get jammed in between the tiny plate gaps, cause a significant loss in HF separation. High level signals bleed across (tuners/CD players etc) more.

With the next amp where I do bad selectors, I'll measure separation & source bleed, before and after a deep clean.
 
This week I had some time to finish the function board and later this weekend I finished the tone control board. The tone control board was a bit of a PITA due to the 5 slider switches. All were taken apart, cleaned and preserved. Hail to the magic pencil eraser :D Thanks again @rottalpha :thumbsup:

First the function board. Almost all components were replaced or upgraded, beside the carbon resistors and two dual fet's. Also all switches were taken apart, cleaned and preserved (oops, old method). I sourced some nice Panny ECQ-P's with 2% tolerance to replace the blue 1% tolerance mylars. They were matched within 1%. @Oilmaster matched a bunch of transistors for this board. Thanks again for that :bigok:

Also a few tweaks were done to make a thermal bond between TR101 and TR103, TR102 and TR104, TR105 and TR107, TR106 and TR108. Oddly the board had some spare holes to move IC103, TR101 and TR103. As of the tweak was made for it. In between lying resitors were moved to the underside of the PCB.

Before:

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After:

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All the function board RCA's were heavily corroded (thank you, Japan) en were beyond rescue. The corrosion was very deep through the nickel (or silver?) plating all the way to the copper. So I found out that C-6 terminals are exactly the same and I was able to source 8 used C-6 terminals without corrosion and I polished them with Belgom and 200 q tips. Pretty happy with the results.

The old ones:

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The 'new' ones, on the top one already polished, the bottom one unpolished:

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Done polishing:

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All replaced parts:

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Actually I was happy to find out it didn't cost much time at all. It does takes a lot of q tips. I think I spent about 5 minutes per single RCA socket.

That is not too bad then, they have come out very nicely :thumbsup:. I had some a while back where l used a piece of rag with some metal polish in the end of a neat fitting rubber hose in a drill, very similar to what Bratwurst7s mentioned. They were in fairly poor condition when l started though.
 
Ultrasonic cleaning...reminds me - due for a clean at the dentist...Excellent thread -- very intense restoration going here ..
 
If there was someone who I could send these switches off to, to do this level of cleaning....man that would be a nice business for all. Deoxit works for a while but it doesn't get that deep clean in these switches.

I tried taking one of these apart once, but it was a failure, not something I'd want to take on again.
 
I use an idea that Avionic once suggested. A piece of Deoxit soaked rag over the end of a 9mm socket and lots of twisting motion. Works like a charm.

Cheers,
James

That is not too bad then, they have come out very nicely :thumbsup:. I had some a while back where l used a piece of rag with some metal polish in the end of a neat fitting rubber hose in a drill, very similar to what Bratwurst7s mentioned. They were in fairly poor condition when l started though.

Great info guy, thanks :thumbsup:

If there was someone who I could send these switches off to, to do this level of cleaning....man that would be a nice business for all. Deoxit works for a while but it doesn't get that deep clean in these switches.

I tried taking one of these apart once, but it was a failure, not something I'd want to take on again.

Yeah, my first one was also a failure, but the second time (and beyond) you know to do it right or what not to do this time. The 10th one is a walk in the park :smoke:
 
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