Care and feeding of your synth’s continuous controller wheels. An inSync reader asks:
“I have an older synthesizer and the pitch bend wheel is not centering back to 0. My keyboard is staying about -13 cents flat. What can I do to fix this problem? I thought about spraying some WD-40 into the wheel – will that help?”
For the answer we went to tech genius, Bruce Hendrix:
“NO! Do not use WD-40! You need a contact cleaner such as Blue Shower or Cramolin. Cleaning the pitch bend potentiometer once it starts to fail like this will probably only prolong the inevitable, which is replacement. You can try that once or twice to see how much it helps, but if the problem comes back it’s time to pull the plug and get a new pot.”