I have a sticky fader on my SQ. It gets up where it’s suppose to, slowly, but doesn’t sit down so well.
I know there have been posts about replacing faders (and I need to replace an encoder as well), but I can’t find them.
I have a service manual and am a qualified bench tech, but where do I find the parts and has anyone on the site made the swap?
Thanks.
D.
Hello D,
I had the same problem and resetting the whole desk and calibrating the faders didn’t solve the problem. In the end I replaced the fader and did it in 20 minutes. It is very easy to do. Just make sure you have a Torx 8 and Torx 20 key. I ordered an original fader at Thomann.de but i don’t know if that is possible for you. Otherwise check your local distributor.
Greetz Ivo
www.madsound.nl
At least with the new faders I bought, there was no cable.
So you would also need additional the appropriate soldering equipment and the ability to resolder the three wires from the existing fader.
No, if you buy the original one the cable is attached and included. It’s just ‘plug&play’
Ivo
The pre-attached harness was an engineering change in the not so distant past and there will still be stock out in the world of faders without the harness.
Thanks for the ideas. I have been seeing posts on other sites about cleaning the brass roller of some lubricant that gets old and sticky and I may explore that option first.
Not plug and play but certainly less expensive.
I would have no issues with soldering a few wires. 
D
Okay, I did it! Took out one fader and tried cleaning and lubricating the brass pulley at the top of each fader. Electronic cleaner and a tiny bit of teflon lube.
It worked like a charm; not a hard job. Took out the other 24 faders and applied the same procedure. A bit fussy and a LOT of screws but it’s all back together and in test mode. All the faders travel up and down snappily and at the same rate of travel. Good! Recalibrated twice.
Bad! A few of the faders have developed a little (but annoying) judder at points in their travel, especially at the very top and bottom, but sometimes in the middle at a preset point. They do end up in the correct setting and the judder is short in travel and duration. But that’s not how they should work.
More diagnostics today to isolate the problem to the fader or the control PCB.
Any other ideas on a fix from the smarties on the blog?
Thanks for any help.
D.
Seems like a few recalibrates got all the faders to behave as they should. I’ll keep testing until I can reproduce the problem or I call it fixed.
A&H was pretty much “if you take the mixer apart, you can own any problem you create.” Fair, I guess, but not super helpful. I was a bit disappointed.
D.
D,
Just buy a original fader for less than 27 euro’s, replace it and everything will just work like it should, trust me. Cleaning, calibrating and ‘oiling’ will only work for just a very short period of time. As soon as the desk heats up the fader ‘jittering’ will start again. And more better: replacing a complete fader is even faster!
Greetz Ivo
I do not believe what you say is the case. The new faders will come with the same sticky lubricant as the ones in my SQ originally had. Five years and the brass pulley at the top of the faders was stuck fast in a number of channels. Why wouldn’t the exact same thing happen in the same faders bought today? it was clear that the pulley lube had congealed and gotten so sticky that the pulleys would not rotate. A&H has never spoken on this original defect but in my SQ it was clear what the problem was. I carefully fixed that and the faders now work as they should.
I am very pleased with my cleaning experiment and I’ll let everyone here know if it was a success or a failure.
D.