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Replacing the
pitch fader on a Technics 1210
When sourcing the pitch faders, I found quite a difference in price. Some suppliers wanted as much as 40 quid each. After hunting around on the net the cheapest UK supplier I found was hard to find records (www.htfr.co.uk). They only charged 19 quid each.
You will need
1) A new pitch fader for each deck
2) A Soldering Iron (ideally a good one!)
3) Some solder
4) Cross head screw driver
5) Small flat head screw driver, or a knife, or a 3” nail,
6) Something soft but tall enough to lay the deck on face down, so the arm takes no weight but the deck is stable.
Skills required
1) Must be able to solder
Allow an hour or 2. It took me over 2, but that included a fag break, a minor disaster, and I was writing this guide at the same time.
Disconnect the deck from the mixer and mains (important, unless you want to electrocute yourself). Remove the lid. Lock the stylus arm to the deck. Remove the cartridge (good advice. One of my needles got minced in the process!!!). Remove the platter (finger in each hole, then push on the centre spline with your thumb and wiggle it). Remove the knob from the pitch fader. Then, remove the 5 screws shown below (keep these somewhere safe) and remove the plastic cover they were holding in place.
Disconnect the plug shown below. It has 2 hooks to hold it in place, 1 either side of the plug. Use a pointed object (small screwdriver, knife or nail) to push the hook ends in to release the plug. It helps to prise one side, then wiggle that through a bit, then do the other.
Flip the deck over (make sure the deck isn’t resting on the arm at all). Unscrew the 4 feet, and undo all 21 screws on the base. Keep them safe. Don’t worry, there are only 3 different types. The long ones go in the corners under the feet. The other 2 types can be told apart by the size of the washer. When it comes to refit, its obvious which of those go where by the size of the hole that the washer sits in.
By the way, some of these may be done up tight, and the screw heads are a little fragile, so make sure you use a suitably sized, good condition screwdriver, or they will get minced! (of course one of them minced on mine, luckily in the end I was able to remove it with a large screw driver bit, rather than having to drill the screw head off)
Now carefully pull the bottom cover off. Try each corner at a time. It may be a little stiff but it does come off. This then reveals the pitch fader. There are 2 screws that hold the fader in place (shown below) undo these, and carefully remove the fader.
See below, there is an earth strap attached to one of the bolts on the right of fader (as shown in the picture). Make sure you refit this later!!!
See below. Your fader unit! Sadly, this unit is not what you get as a replacement. You only get the fader itself, and the old one must be removed from the circuit board, and the new one soldered in place.
Firstly, note the hole in the fader next to the pins to the green l.e.d. There isn’t one the other side, so when you refit the new fader, the hole must appear there. If you fit it the wrong way I doubt it will work too well! It may even damage the deck. The new one must be installed this way around!
Remove the 2 screws holding the mounting plate to the fader. When it comes to removing the fader itself, there is just enough play (if you bend the l.e.d wires a little) for the fader to come away from the housing.
Now comes the fun part. Removing the old fader. If you don’t fancy the job then take it to someone who can do it for you. Maybe an electrical repair shop. I suspect they would charge you a tenner or so for removing both faders. Read the next few sections before you decide on whether you’ll try and remove them yourself or not!
There are 4 pins soldered on either end to the board. Now maybe my soldering iron is just rubbish, but I found it impossible to simply unsolder these because the other 3 pins held it too firm to remove and wouldn’t remain hot long enough for each pin to be unsoldered. Try heating each one at a time very quickly whilst applying pressure to move the fader away from the board. Keep trying, it will hopefully come off eventually providing your soldering is nice and hot.
If (like me) you fail to do it this way, see the section at
the bottom titled What if I can’t unsolder the faders from the board?
Put the new fader roughly in place, the pins will sort of engage in the holes but wont go through because of the solder that’s been left. Screw the fader mounting plate back on using the 2 screws removed earlier. Make sure that little hole on the fader is next to the l.e.d, and not on the other side!!!
Get your soldering iron to each pin, heat it and push the fader to the board as you do so (fingers under the fader, with your thumb pressing on the board). Do them one at a time and make several passes if need be, all the pins will eventually push through into place. Once they are all in. add a small blob of new solder to each one if need be.
MAKE SURE YOU DON’T ACCIDENTALLY SOLDER IN A SHORT CIRCUIT!
After you’ve done it, make sure there are no small strands of solder going between terminals, or across the circuit board!
Phew! Its time to put it all back together again. Firstly, put the fader near to position, feed the wire through into the deck. There are 2 holes to go through. See below. It must go right through both, otherwise you wont be able to get to the plug later on!
You should now be able to grab the plug from underneath the deck.
Be careful when fitting the fader unit. Make sure the led is located properly in its hole!
Screw the fader in, and don’t forget to attach that earth wire.
Refit the bottom cover. Only put in the 4 long corner screws!!!
Flip the deck over, refit the plug coming from the fader (this is why you only refitted 4 screws, because if the plug somehow got lost inside the deck, you only have 4 to remove to get the cover off again!). The plug will only go back on one way.
Now flip the deck over again, and refit the remaining screws into the bottom cover.
Refit the feet.
Flip the deck over onto its feet.
Refit the plastic cover with 5 screws.
Refit the platter, and fader knob.
Now plug it in and see if it all works, which it should, it did for me (shame about the minced needle though L )
What if I can’t unsolder the fader from the board?
Yeah, just how typical is that eh?
You will need:
1) Junior hack saw
2) Molegrips or good pliers
3) If you’ve got a vice, even better
I’m sure there is a better way, bit this is how I had to do it! You may choose not to and I don’t blame you, because it sounds nasty. In practice it isn’t though.
Attach the molegrips as shown below, place on a firm surface (bench) and use the hack saw to cut through 3 of the 4 pins each end. There is enough room either to cut through 3 of the 4. Alternatively, if you have some cutters that will fit in the gap, use those. Mine wouldn’t fit. Make sure you leave enough on the soldered end to get on to with the mole grips later (see the amount I left in the picture below)
Be sensible about this. Take your time. Don’t damage the board, cut as close to the fader as possible (it doesn’t matter If the fader gets a bit of a beating, because its knackered anyway). And keep the hack saw blade away from those 4 wires!!!
The end result will hopefully be this (see below).
Now unsolder the final pin either end and remove the fader completely.
Then, you need to remove the ends left in the board. Attach the molegrips to each one, and unsolder each one at a time, you’ll see on some it takes a bit of force to pull them out. Quite how you are supposed to remove them all just using a soldering iron is beyond me!
An extra pair of hands may be useful here, i.e. one hand holding the board, one hand holding the soldering iron, and another hand pulling the molegrips. What I did was to hold the molegrips between my knees and pull the board away with the hand holding the board. Worked a treat!
Now you can get back to fitting your new fader!