Cleaning tascam m520 channels

[harvestboy]

Going through each channel on my tascam m520 and cleaning the pots, buttons and LED leads. Curious if it’s worth doing any cleaning to these switches, and what the best way to do that would be.

 

[sweetbeats]

I would consider treating those switches as essential if you are experiencing any intermittency in signal integrity at the front end of a channel. Those switches handle the source and phase functions...can’t remember what else off the top of my head at the moment, but the toggle levers actuate a set of brass slide contacts that can become dirty and/or oxidized...the contact housing is semi-open and it’s pretty easy, especially after decades, dirt and other contaminates to enter the contact body. Because the contacts are metal-to-metal you want to use a contact cleaner/treatment specified for metal-to-metal contacts such as DeoxIT D5 or D100. Jet the cleaner into the contact housing where the toggle lever enters, exercise the switch 25-50 times, then jet more cleaner in to flush out the switch, then use some canned air duster to blow out excess cleaner or anything else that will come out. Let the channel card sit upright so the contact housing has a chance to drain and dry.

That’s what I do anyway.