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3A Rheostat Rebuild, the hard way


kenyonbm

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Hello all.

Working on my "new" pair of alnico woofer 3a's that have the normal rheostat problems. I had no problem getting the speakers open, removing the rheostats, disassembling the rheostats, cleaning them, and getting the whole thing back together.

I am not completely satisfied with the results. Big improvement, but mid is still scratchy and some dead spots.

Before I redo that one or start the other, I am looking for some more information about the rheostats and the materials they are made of.

In the center of the ceramic back/coil assembly is a silvery washer shaped contact. It looks like silver plated brass. I didn't want to clean it down to the brass (if that is what it is.) Does anyone know what this contact is made of? Or if it is plated or solid?

Also, the wiper seams silver plated and is stiff, maybe bronze?

Does anyone know if this wiper is solid or plated or what the material is?

I am thinking of having them replated, maybe silver, gold or rhodium.

This is not as crazy as it sounds but knowing the base metal whould help. Any information much appreciated.

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>Hello all.

>

>Working on my "new" pair of alnico woofer 3a's that

>have the normal rheostat problems. I had no problem getting

>the speakers open, removing the rheostats, disassembling the

>rheostats, cleaning them, and getting the whole thing back

>together.

>

>I am not completely satisfied with the results. Big

>improvement, but mid is still scratchy and some dead spots.

Ken,

I don’t know the answers to any of your questions, but you can see by the number of posts in this forum that those pots are a ... nuisance!

Just wanted you to know that I solved the problems of pots in my AR-3a’s … forever. Let me be clear; I still have to balance the energy split between the woofer and the mid/tweeter, but I do this with volume controls.

That is, I use one amp for the woofers and another amp for the mid/tweeter. Pots have been completely removed from the circuit, even though they are still on the boxes.

My AR-3a’s improved dramatically once I made this change, plus I made an enormous gain in headroom on the amp driving the mids/tweeters.

Ken, I know this is a little off topic, but the reality is low wattage controls like volume controls are far, far easier to maintain than high wattage controls like pots in speakers.

Further, all these pots do is “pad” or absorb power to balance the speakers. When removed, we send to the drivers just the power they need to produce sound … that is, there is less waste and consequently more headroom.

Now, let me clarify. You can only remove the pots when you are bi-amping. The sensitivity of the mid/tweeter increases so much with the pots out there is just no way to balance the speakers with an EQ (any I don't care how good it is). In short, you have to reduce SIGNIFICANTLY the power sent to the mid/tweeter once the pots are out of the circuit.

Ken, I realize this is off topic, but thought you’d be interested in a “long term” solution that simultaneously solves a number of problems.

Regards,

Jerry

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Jerry, Thanks for the input.

I had considered several approaches, including bi-amping, since the speakers are designed with that in mind. I think yours is a worthy solution, but I have decided to attempt to restore my pair to usable condition with as little intervention as possible.

What I am going for is a vintage sounding system for vinyl playback.

I want the 3a's to look and sound like very good 40 year old speakers.

I have put new wine in old bottles, but not this time if I can help it.

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>I have put new wine in old bottles, but not this time if I can

>help it.

Wise choice; this speaker works wonderfully as designed.

It is my guess from examining Pollack potentiometers in good condition that the wiper is made from phosphor bronze and the contact plate from brass. Both were silverplated when new -- the sliver can be seen after cleaning the surfaces with a pencil eraser. The Nichrome end rivets appear to have been silver plated as well. Plating a layer of silver was something I had considered but never did. A mild etch or electropolish followed by electroplating a thick layer would seem to be reasonable provided the wiper and contact are not corroded beyond use. Should you try it, let us know how it worked. One might also experiment with a tin electroless-plating solution called "Tinnit" that is used for passivating copper circuit boards; tin oxide is also conductive.

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Guest Eunomians

I bet one those disposible electroplating pens would do the trick real nicely. All the more of an excuse to buy one :) For less than $20, u can't go wrong giving it a shot.

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The silver plating pen is what I am thinking of.

They also offer gold and rhodium pens. Silver I can cobble together on my own. I am told that gold is used for low level signals. Rhodium is a lot harder than and might not corrode like silver.

I think with some more looking I could find other metals.

I am also thinking of just making some solid silver washers and using a little brass nut and bolt or a copper pop rivet to replace the plated washer and rivet.

Kind of a lot of effort I know, but there are a lot of them out there.

I think the underlying problem may be the insulation, which I think may be "rock wool", rather than fiberglass, which I believe is made from steel blast furnace by-product. Might be some sulfer in there, enough to corrode the silver and destroy the rheostat. Shure is itchy.

http://www.naima.org/pages/resources/safety/rock1.html

Ken

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Hi John;

I just tried to find the information about copper circuit board coating from the W Marshall Leach Jr web site.

There is so much information there and I wasn't able to find the actual brief referrence quickly.

I felt it more important to mention it here quickly, what I do remember about it.

He had noted that, we should not try to, TIN PLATE", circuit boards with the liquid as it creates a source for serious corrosion.

Often, soldering over un-finished circuit board, pre-tinning, paths is usually just done with solder, but this liquid short cut will cause more problems than it is worth.

This is the only mention I have read about that products use, ever.

Before reading that, I was going to do a short cut and use it.

It is definitely a no go, John, sorry.

De-Oxit or the earlier Cramolin is a definite go though.

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Hi again;

I finally found what I wanted from the W Marshall Leach Jr website.

I'm having difficulty downloading a screen print.

I'll be back.

I'm back.

The file is almost 3 mb and is slightly larger than we are allowed to download.

It sure is nice being able to get back into the write-up's after the fact, I just discovered this only a few months ago.

I sent Mark an email requesting a slightly larger download capacity if possible.

Irregardless, the caution is for the liquid used as a psuedo tin plating cold dip.

He advises against using it, as it corrodes solder traces, making it very difficult, if not impossible to solder to, afterwards.

Stay tuned, if I can download the file here I have saved in my computer.

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>I think the underlying problem may be the insulation, which I

>think may be "rock wool", rather than fiberglass,

>which I believe is made from steel blast furnace by-product.

>Might be some sulfer in there, enough to corrode the silver

>and destroy the rheostat.

Ken, I think your observation that the "brown fiberglass" used in early AR speakers may not be fiberglass but rather rock wool (a.k.a. mineral wool, slag wool) may be right on the money. For examples: (i) sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide are well known emissions from its manufacture, (ii) there is a French paper that discusses the effects of such insulation in animal lung tissue. It states that sulfur from rock wool is dissolved in the tissue. Original AR x-o wiring was tin plated. As you note, the silver plated brass and bronze in the potentiometer are the weak links. There are a number of Ag-S and Cu-S compounds that can be formed in the presence of moisture--especially when the materials are resistance heated.

If so, the brown insulation may be the root cause; future corrosion might be eliminated by replacing it with yellow fiberglass.

Excellent observation.

The electrolytic pen sounds like a good idea. Tin or silver would work. Tin plating from a heated (140 F) electroless source (Tinnit) is also a good method. Before plating with either method, one should clean the metals well. Often a sequence of abrasion, followed by detergent and water to remove grease; acetone to remove the detergent; isopropyl alcohol to remove acetone; followed by a long rinse in flowing water should leave a very clean surface.

After plating, one should rinse the pieces for a long time in flowing water to remove any trace of residual plating compounds -- if improperly cleaned the work may later corrode.

Tin oxide and silver oxide are both conductors. The layer from hot-plated Tinnit is easy to solder. If over a very long time, tin oxide becomes too thick, it may have to be roughed before soldering; however, that's not an issue here.

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  • 3 weeks later...

After a brief detour to determine the source of the corrosive agent that was destroying the rheostats in the first place, I have an overall plan on how to proceed.

It turns out that the insulation is rock wool and that is does contain sulfur. So the insulation must be replaced, with fiberglass, so the problem will not reoccur. Then the tarnished parts of the rheostats can be replated and I hope, the problem solved.

I have ordered a silver plating kit, and will be posting more soon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I received my silver plating kit and spent the afternoon rebuilding my rheostats. One of the other pair of Rheostats was even more corroded than either of the first pair.

The kit consists of a "wall wart" 1.7v 330 ma power supply, some plating solution (I believe Silver Nitrate), and a wand that is more or less a shrink-wrapped SS tube with a chisel shaped felt tip.

I scraped off the blue deposits, then used a Dermal grinding wheel and finished up with a felt wheel and Brasso polish. The deposits did not just rinse off with water indicating to me that they are not just Copper Sulfate, which is very soluble. I have saved a sample if anyone cares to analyze it.

After several rinses in white vinegar and water, I tried out the plating pen. The negative connects to the piece, positive to the pen. The pen is dipped in the solution and applied to the object. The pen is kept moving and the color shows in about 30 seconds. I plated the central contact and the rivets that hold the coils. The kit recommends 1 minute per square inch. so I gave each one 2 or 3 coats about a minute each. The finished product looked about like a worn silver plate spoon, because of the initial pitting.

The wipers cleaned up without plating. They appear to be a solid material, not plated, Maybe solid silver. The rheostat coils seemed intact.

I had intended to make my own plating pen, but buying chemicals of and sort has become very difficult. The kit I purchased cost about $50 with shipping and could plated a lot of rheostats.

Will be posting pictures and results soon.

Ken

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>I received my silver plating kit and spent the afternoon

>rebuilding my rheostats.

Hello Ken: Sounds like you are having fun!

>deposits did not just rinse off with water indicating to me

>that they are not just Copper Sulfate, which is very soluble.

Correct. Copper sulfate, CuSO4 disolves in water. However, another green-blue form, basic copper sulfate CuSO4.3Cu(OH)2 is insoluble in hot or cold water. There are other blue/green copper componds that are not soluble in water.

>The wipers cleaned up without plating. They appear to be a

>solid material, not plated, Maybe solid silver.

The (springy) rotating wipers are phosphor-bronze, a tin-copper alloy. Those I have looked at are silver plated. Solid silver would not make a good spring.

We look forward to pictures!

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I have reassembled my 3a's and after listening, I believe the project to be a complete success.

I was concerned that the pitting of the round center contact would prevent the maintaining of good contact with the wiper, but the contact area is apparently large enough to over come this. The wipers cleaned up with just polishing.

The rheostats turn easily if not completely smoothly. No noise is heard if they are adjusted while listening and there are no dead spots.

To prevent the corrosion re-occurring I did replace the "brown stuffing/rock wool" with 20oz of the pink stuff (OC). Each 3a had contained 28oz of the rock wool in random torn chunks.

I would not hesitate to recommend this as a minimal approach to the "rheostat problem".

If one had the plating kit and a dremel tool, this could all be done in 3-4 hours.

1) Remove grills.

2) Remove woofers and unsolder.

3) Remove rock wool, use gloves and dust mask. Discard.

4) Remove sealant and save.

5) Note wiring and remove rheostats.

6) Remove bails from and disassemble rheostats.

7) Remove corrosion from center contact and rivet heads with fine dremel wheel.

8) Polish contact with wire wheel and finish with felt wheel and Brasso. Clean with vinegar, Dawn and toothbrush. Rinse.

9) Polish wiper with felt wheel and Brasso.

10)Plate center contact and rivet heads with silver plating pen.

11)Rinse plated parts, dry and re-assemble rheostats.

12)Re-assemble speakers.

A) I reused the original sealant by warming it and rolling it out on a table top, pinching 8 equal pieces for each speaker and rolling into 4 inch pieces.

B) Replace original insulation with 20oz of fiberglass.

The plating kit cost $50 including shipping and could treat a lot of rheostats. The process is quite simple and took a couple of minutes for each piece, 10 minutes total.

I believe refurbishing the original rheostats has several advantages and is cost effective and practical.

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Hi Ken;

Can please tell me why you chose to re-stuff only 20 ounces of fiberglass, rather than the 28 ounces of the Rockwool?

The plating procedure sounds interesting.

You certainly did a step a by step operation, thank you.

Does anyone else know how many ounces of fibeglass is usually in a cabinet.

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Vern, I went with 20oz after reading Carl's piece about the 4ax's. I tried 14oz, half the original 28oz, but it just did not seem to be full enough. I really sould, and will, do some measurement, but I was more interested in how the plating project would work out.

I also considered leaving the rock wool in place, figuring that the speakers might live another 20 years or so, or just replacing the stuff right by the rheostats, but the stuff was just so nasty to work around it had to go.

Ken

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> Does anyone else know how many ounces of fibeglass is usually in a cabinet.

The AR-3a assembly document dated Sept. 1971 specifies 20 oz; the ceramic-magnet woofer was by then standard. This has been discussed in many older posts; the assembly document is in the CSP Archives.

28 oz was used in AR-3a manufactured with Alnico magnet woofers that I have seen.

Undocumented changes (e.g. e-bay purchases of unknown parentage) can confuse restorers who simply replace ounce-for-ounce whatever was in the cabinet at the time of purchase. For example, Alnico woofers are in high demand, so a seller may choose to replace the Alnicos with ceramic magnet woofers prior to sale, thus leaving an incorrect amount of stuffing in place. The only certain way to identify the original woofer style is by serial number [mfg. date]. The transistion from Alnico to ceramic is between s.n. 38,224 and 39,429 [~June 1970].

Simply weighing the amount of original material doesn't always "get you there" either, as a prior owner may not have returned all the stuffing after repair.

This discovery that the brown stuffing was not fiberglass, but rock wool adds another possible dimension that is not possible to unravel. Tom Tyson stated that Edgar Villchur considered rock wool to be poorer at adiabatic-to-isothermal conversion. This makes sense as rock wool contains a lot of its mass in the form of lumps and large diameter fibers (inefficient at heat transfer). So, what if only cabinets with rock wool contained 28 oz? I know for sure that one of my two AR-3a contained 28 oz. of brown filling.

Ditto for the AR-4x. I can recall early units having 18 oz of brown stuffing, whereas the later ones were all filled with 12 oz.

My suspicion was that this weight change related to inductor coil changes in both the 3a (#7 -> #9) and 4x (#4 -> #5). Perhaps it was solely due to the "color of fiberglass" that we now know are two different materials?

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FYI

All those shiny dots on attachment (photo) #1 are globs of glass normally contained in rockwool fibers. Modern fiberglass insulation doesn't have these. The fibers are smooth.

Remember, it's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

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Carl, Yes there are a fair number of small granules, maybe the size of fine beach sand, included in the rock wool, as well as a myriad of tiny, broken, breathable and very irritating fibers. By weight, both are fairly minor. The material varies from fine to coarse, but it seems unlikely that it was intended as any thing other than building insulation. The color you can see is pretty close to the actual.

I cannot understand why it is torn in chunks the way it is, almost like it was a waste or byproduct salvaged from some other process.

Uncompressed, it is at least 50% more dense than fiberglass.

Thanks for your piece on stuffing. I read it with great interest.

Ken

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>Carl, Yes there are a fair number of small granules, maybe

>the size of fine beach sand, included in the rock wool, as

>well as a myriad of tiny, broken, breathable and very

>irritating fibers. By weight, both are fairly minor. The

>material varies from fine to coarse, but it seems unlikely

>that it was intended as any thing other than building

>insulation. The color you can see is pretty close to the

>actual.

>

>I cannot understand why it is torn in chunks the way it is,

>almost like it was a waste or byproduct salvaged from some

>other process.

>

>Uncompressed, it is at least 50% more dense than fiberglass.

>

>Thanks for your piece on stuffing. I read it with great

>interest.

>

>Ken

Thanks Ken. If you can, please weight what you have and calculate the box stuffing density. I'm interested in how it matches up with the number in my report. Your picture shows exatly what I also used in my study.

I think the pulled apart nature is normal. They used to blow it into houses for insulation.

Remember, it's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

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Attached are photos of an open pot and stuffing from a recently acquired AR-3a, serial number #50644. Its companion is #50721. This pair was manufactured in May or June of 1971, and has the foam surround woofer and #9 coil.

The stuffing in both speakers is the later shredded yellow fiberglass, not rock wool. Each cabinet had 20 to 21 oz of fiberglass in it.

Note the pot corrosion. I have seen too many pots like these to believe that rock wool removal is the answer to our AR pot issues. The pots in both cabinets are in similar condition.

With that said, I always replace the very nasty rock wool with yellow fiberglass when I run across it in the earlier speakers. It is typically sold today as pipe and hot water heater insulation.

Roy

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/user_files/1731.jpg

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/user_files/1732.jpg

post-101150-1162751774.jpg

post-3-1162751774.jpg

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Roy:

You are correct in saying that removal of rock wool is not the answer to all our pot problems. IMO the worst, but not all, the corrosion is in those cabinets.

Other gases and vapors including moisture, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide can permeate the surround and woofer cone slowly over long times; these materials seal well enough to make a loudspeaker, but would never "hold a vacuum." If the silverware in a china cabinet turns black in a year or two, so will plated parts in the pots.

cheers,

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>Roy:

>

>You are correct in saying that removal of rock wool is not the

>answer to all our pot problems. IMO the worst, but not all,

>the corrosion is in those cabinets.

>

>Other gases and vapors including moisture, sulfur dioxide and

>hydrogen sulfide can permeate the surround and woofer cone

>slowly over long times; these materials seal well enough to

>make a loudspeaker, but would never "hold a vacuum."

> If the silverware in a china cabinet turns black in a year or

>two, so will plated parts in the pots.

>

>cheers,

>

>

Roy, is it possible the rock wool was switched to the yellow stuff without your knowledge before you acquired them? Or, are you the original owner?

So, why exactly, did Henry K. switch from pots to switches? I recently upgraded an AR 12 (circa 1977). It's about 10 years older than the 2ax-3a era. It had switches to adjust the mid and tweeter outputs. Did he become aware of the potential for problems? Exactly which model AR was the first to have switches? Kloss seemed to stick with dB switch adjustments for quite some time well into the Advent era.

Quest. 2 or, is it 4 or 5. So why exactly is the plating on the stator rivets and plate so important? Arent the underlying brass contacts okay as well? I thought brass was a pretty good conductor. I don't think the brass rotor was plated either.

Remember, it's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

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Hi Carl,

>Roy, is it possible the rock wool was switched to the yellow

>stuff without your knowledge before you acquired them? Or, are

>you the original owner?

No, I have restored many AR-3a's over the years and these were definitely all original in every way, with no signs of internal tampering. I have only seen the rockwool in the pre-1970 AR-3a that used the alnico, cloth surround woofer. Most AR's I have seen with rockwool in them are pre-1970.

>So, why exactly, did Henry K. switch from pots to switches? I

>recently upgraded an AR 12 (circa 1977).

Henry Kloss was a long time out of AR and busy with KLH, and later Advent, by the time AR moved to switches in the 70's. Interestingly, most KLH speakers back into the 60's, and all of the 70's Advents, used switches. I'm not sure I have ever seen a classic KLH speaker that used anything but switches for attenuation.

In the mid 70's the "AR-3a Improved" and the AR-11 used switches. My guess is that AR knew they had a "pot problem":-).

I have many AR pots out there in restored AR speakers that are functioning quite well without re-plating. I suppose plating could offer extra protection.

Roy

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/user_files/1733.jpg

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