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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Foam rot in old MXR pedals

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2/10/2001 3:25 AM

Re: Foam rot in old MXR pedals

At least you can clean that goo off. The foam surround used on many types of woofers also decomposes over time, but it means you have a cone flopping around, unattached to anything except the wires. There isn't a solvent to clear up that particular mess.

Usable insulation to stuff MXR-type boxes can come in a variety of forms. Many of the suggestions offered so far are quite clever. One potential source is that cheap crap you can buy for carpet underlay. Makes lousy underlay but it compresses nicely under pressure and holds your battery in place quite well. It's a gray foam with a kind of coating on one side to keep it from slipping on the floor.

Another thing I use is that thin dense coloured foam you can get in 1 square-foot pieces from hobby stores. It looks like felt but is a synthetic foam used to make decorations for kids rooms and such. How likely it is to decompose, I don't know, but it can be easily cut to fit with scissors, bends well, grips batteries, and cheap.

Finally, if you are ABSOLUTELY sure that you will never ever ever again solder or unsolder anything on your board, you can plunk a huge wad of hot melt glue on the trace side of the board. It is effectively nonconductive, will never fall off, and while you have the glue gun heated up, you can also stick a daub on the component side to provide strain relief for all wire leads (especially the battery leads),

2/10/2001 4:54 AM
Floydfan	I had been wondering about that hot glue, but keep forgetting to ask about it. I figured it would be hot enough to melt wire insulation, but you seem to have used it with success. Cool!

2/11/2001 11:28 PM
Pete	I'd probably give the hot a glue a miss (depending on the pedal I suppose). There's going to come a time when it will need a repair. Glue just makes the task all that much harder Pete

2/12/2001 3:12 AM

I'd probably give the hot a glue a miss (depending on the pedal I suppose). There's going to come a time when it will need a repair. Glue just makes the task all that much harder

Pete

I'd have to agree. I know hotglue doesn't really hold as well as some people claim it does, but I think you could easily crack a PCB removing it from hotglue.

What I could see doing however is hotgluing a dummy board in place, (I'm not thinking of a suitable dummy mat'l. at the moment) then remove the dummy board, and the hotglue would then provide a nice premolded cradle to set the PCB into, without being hotglued in. Just a thought, I never tried anything like that.

Pete

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