Jolly Repairman with Amazing Skills!

[amirm]

Folks, an electronics repair technician doesn't get any better than this. Where most of us would curse when something gets complicated with the repair, he just chuckles and keeps going. When most of us would give up, he digs deeper and fixes things. On top of that, he manufactures broken parts with his machining and in this case, molding! Just amazing (make sure you watch the last 15 minutes). This is on top of his great video production techniques.

 

[IAtaman]

Mend it Mark is fantastic! He has been a favourite of mine for a while now and I know some folks here on ASR follow him as well. In another episode, he rebuilt the spring mechanism of a tape deck from bare metal if I recall correctly. Blimey! I wish I had half of his patience..

 

[restorer-john]

It's a pity his soldering and desoldering skills are so poor. In every video, he tends to absolutely wreck PCBs that are easy to remove components from. He tears lands off, rips traces and poorly applies solder when he resolders. Then spends a lifetime 'repairing' the damage he deliberately did. I've spend decades on 1970s/80s and 90s audio and Japanese PCBs are a piece of cake to not damage. I cringe when I see his poor joints and terrible practices.

Lifted copper traces is a sign of a lazy technician, who thinks more heat makes faster work. Drop the temperature, slow down and do quality work. Clean up between takes. Clean up afterwards.

Ultrasonic cleaning is NOT the solution for cleaning switches, selectors and pots. Not only does it strip the silicone shaft lubricant, it doesn't clean oxide off at all. And it can destroy the resistive track altogether in a pot. The shafts/contacts will corrode and deteriorate. It can only be done properly by a complete dismantling and cleaning with metal polish, detergents, ultrasonic, reassembly and lubrication etc. De-oxit is a crap product. It destroys nylon, cracks plastics and is just a short term band-aid solution to get stuff out the door.

For those of us who have been properly restoring and rebuilding classic HiFi for many decades, these clowns in their garden shed with a Youtube channel are just something to shake our heads at.

 

[abdo123]

It's a pity his soldering and desoldering skills are so poor. In every video, he tends to absolutely wreck PCBs that are easy to remove components from. He tears lands off, rips traces and poorly applies solder when he resolders. Then spends a lifetime 'repairing' the damage he deliberately did. I've spend decades on 1970s/80s and 90s audio and Japanese PCBs are a piece of cake to not damage. I cringe when I see his poor joints and terrible practices.

Lifted copper traces is a sign of a lazy technician, who thinks more heat makes faster work. Drop the temperature, slow down and do quality work. Clean up between takes. Clean up afterwards.

Ultrasonic cleaning is NOT the solution for cleaning switches, selectors and pots. Not only does it strip the silicone shaft lubricant, it doesn't clean oxide off at all. And it can destroy the resistive track altogether in a pot. The shafts/contacts will corrode and deteriorate. It can only be done properly by a complete dismantling and cleaning with metal polish, detergents, ultrasonic, reassembly and lubrication etc. De-oxit is a crap product. It destroys nylon, cracks plastics and is just a short term band-aid solution to get stuff out the door.

For those of us who have been properly restoring and rebuilding classic HiFi for many decades, these clowns in their garden shed with a Youtube channel are just something to shake our heads at.

Ouch.

 

[Neddy]

Nothing like the 'chomp' of a hard bitten, real Pro

 

[Ricardus]

For those of us who have been properly restoring and rebuilding classic HiFi for many decades, these clowns in their garden shed with a Youtube channel are just something to shake our heads at.

Unfortunately this is true of so many channels. Put the word "expert" or "university" in the title and people believe them.

 

[MRC01]

... De-oxit is a crap product. It destroys nylon, cracks plastics and is just a short term band-aid solution to get stuff out the door. ...

What do you recommend for cleaning a pot that has developed scratchiness? Simply turning it back and forth through its full range a few times often does the job. But when it doesn't?

 

[Doodski]

De-oxit is a crap product. It destroys nylon, cracks plastics

I experienced this plastic cracking and falling to bits sometimes with Nu Trol contact cleaner and it also dries up after several months to short years. If De-oxit is crap that way too then we should settle on an available and easily purchased product name and type. So we are on the same page when recommending a contact cleaner to ASR peeps.

 

[voodooless]

It's a pity his soldering and desoldering skills are so poor. In every video, he tends to absolutely wreck PCBs that are easy to remove components from. He tears lands off, rips traces and poorly applies solder when he resolders. Then spends a lifetime 'repairing' the damage he deliberately did. I've spend decades on 1970s/80s and 90s audio and Japanese PCBs are a piece of cake to not damage. I cringe when I see his poor joints and terrible practices.

Lifted copper traces is a sign of a lazy technician, who thinks more heat makes faster work. Drop the temperature, slow down and do quality work. Clean up between takes. Clean up afterwards.

Ultrasonic cleaning is NOT the solution for cleaning switches, selectors and pots. Not only does it strip the silicone shaft lubricant, it doesn't clean oxide off at all. And it can destroy the resistive track altogether in a pot. The shafts/contacts will corrode and deteriorate. It can only be done properly by a complete dismantling and cleaning with metal polish, detergents, ultrasonic, reassembly and lubrication etc. De-oxit is a crap product. It destroys nylon, cracks plastics and is just a short term band-aid solution to get stuff out the door.

For those of us who have been properly restoring and rebuilding classic HiFi for many decades, these clowns in their garden shed with a Youtube channel are just something to shake our heads at.

It always amazes me how much skill, knowledge and experience this work needs! And it’s truly on a very wide range of subjects.

 

[egellings]

I experienced this plastic cracking and falling to bits sometimes with Nu Trol contact cleaner and it also dries up after several months to short years. If De-oxit is crap that way too then we should settle on an available and easily purchased product name and type. So we are on the same page when recommending a contact cleaner to ASR peeps.

I dissolve A bit of DeOxit, the oily red liquid in a tiny bottle, in a bit of IPA (not the beer!) and put that into a syringe. I can then place the solution just on contact points, rather than spraying it over everything.

 

[SSS]

Cleaning pots and switches on old vintage gear was successful with this procedure: Spray WD-40 in, move or/and rotate 20 times, clean with ethanol thoroughly, spray vaseline or Ballistol (smells bad) in.

 

[AdamG]

Brilliant and in a way quite Therapeutic. What a life doing what you love to do and seeing the results. Superb.

 

[Salt]

Cleaning pots and switches on old vintage gear was successful with this procedure: Spray WD-40 in, move or/and rotate 20 times, clean with ethanol thoroughly, spray vaseline or Ballistol (smells bad) in.

Ballistol helps avoiding tick bite, additionally

 

[amm]

What do you recommend for cleaning a pot that has developed scratchiness? Simply turning it back and forth through its full range a few times often does the job. But when it doesn't?

Pot scratchiness may also be due its resistive track getting pitted and damaged over the years. In that case, one needs to disassemble the pot (mach harder than just spraying it) and use a soft lead pencil to go over its resistive track until it is coated with a thin layer of carbon. This used to work for me in my past life. Of course the efficacy of this approach depends of the type of pot.

 

[restorer-john]

Pot scratchiness may also be due its resistive track getting pitted and damaged over the years. In that case, one needs to disassemble the pot (mach harder than just spraying it)

For many old vintage pots, that is the only way to ensure a good 'second life'. The pot must be removed from the PCB, carefully opened up, the track/s cleaned with a Q-tip style or camera sensor cleaner sticks (cut down)+ IPA. Then clean up the dried lubricant, polish the contact of each wiper and lubricate with a thin film of your favourite contact lubricant. If the shaft sleeve needs lubricant use a mixture of high viscosity silicone oil, with a lower viscosity silicone grease and various syringe applicators. You can buy a selection for a few dollars and load them up with all your favourite lubricants etc.

Some pots of course are impossible to dismantle. If you can gain access to the track and wiper, you can carefully clean and lubricate them, but others you have no choice but to blast them with something through a hole. That is a last resort and something I hate doing.

I've seen Alps black beauty pots destroyed by ultrasonic cleaning. Each step is a laser trimmed resistive element printed on a ceramic substrate and US cleaning will eat it away like coke on a tooth.

 

[amirm]

He tears lands off, rips traces and poorly applies solder when he resolders. Then spends a lifetime 'repairing' the damage he deliberately did. I've spend decades on 1970s/80s and 90s audio and Japanese PCBs are a piece of cake to not damage. I cringe when I see his poor joints and terrible practices.

I have only watched a few of his videos. In this video it does seem like some of the landings were stripped. When this happened in my days as a repairman, I cursed the crap PCB material that did that, not someone's technique. I would get gear that if you breathed on it, the traces would come off requiring repair. And yes, this included Japanese gear.

 

[restorer-john]

I watched a ton of mend it Mark's videos and while he is entertaining, I spend most of my time shouting at the screen. LOL. He has a great array of test gear, is a bit of a jack of all trades, but some of his practices are a bit how ya goin'.

As Amir said, the production is good. It's really hard to even line up photographs as you work, letalone well framed video.

 

[amirm]

It can only be done properly by a complete dismantling and cleaning with metal polish, detergents, ultrasonic, reassembly and lubrication etc.

I have done that and it is time consuming and often the tabs break right off where you can no longer assemble the pot/switch, etc. I would only resort to that if normal cleaning did not salvage the part. And who is going to pay for such repairs where there are dozens of such parts??? I suspect you are doing it for yourself, not charging customers.

I have watched his other videos where he repairs pretty serious failures. He knows what he is doing. You are being very unkind to him.

 

[restorer-john]

In this video it does seem like some of the landings were stripped.

It's because he desolders and then doesn't individually move each pin laterally to separate them from the land before prising the switch/pot off the board.

 

[restorer-john]

You are being very unkind to him.

Maybe a bit. Yes.

I'm a perfectionist and what I do doesn't pay my bills, never has. It costs what it costs and takes as long as I want.

I just watched one where he chased down a short circuit. He could have found it in a few seconds with an ESR/low ohms meter, but dragged it out for forever. But that wouldn't make a video would it?