Input jack replacement Crate BT-350

[tonynorie]

Hi:

This is my first post on this forum and hopefully I'm conforming to all of the rules and regs....

I have a defective input jack on my Crate bass amp that I want to repair but soldering on a circuit board is beyond my skill level. I'm retired and want to save money with this old workhorse and would like to know what you guys think about me removing the circuit board and taking it an audio shop for r&r of the jack?

Also, I'm planning on replacing the knobs on this unit and have been shopping on the 'net......most of the knobs list 6mm as the shaft size they fit....is that the most common size?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Tony

[DeadSpeaker]

Replacing a jack is very easy. You should be able to pick up an iron, solder, and the jack at radioshack. If you are uncomfortable doing it yourself, some music stores will do that kind of thing for you.

As for the knobs, you need to know what kind of shaft it has(18 teeth push on kind or the plain kind with set screws on the knob.) Check out mouser for that.

[Iain McNeill]

desoldering hardware like jacks off a PCB can be tricky. You need a powerful iron and asbestos fingers

If you're not too worried about looks you could just wire a pigtail thru the old jack to the PCB and put an in-line socket on the end. Cheesy I know but hey, it gets the job done and saves the $50-100 a shop will want for the job.

pot's are very varied. Have you tried just cleaning them with de-oxit or similar and just working them end-to-end to scrape the crud to the ends? A proprietary cleaner has a lubricant in it as well that extends life. Just using alcohol will only be a temporary fix - from my experience. Otherwise you'll need to match them for shaft diameter, length and shape.

[tonynorie]

Thanks for the replies. I actually do have a soldering iron and gun but, after reading about soldering to a board in various articles on the 'net, I've decided I could do a lot of damage......I'll stick to less sophisticated soldering jobs.

I guess one of the things I'm trying to learn is if I can save money by removing the board rather than adding to bench time for the tech to do the removal. Whaddya think?

[tonynorie]

In addition to my previous post, I have to mention that the jack I'm replacing is totally broken, physically speaking. Before I purchased the amp, a not was cross threaded on to the mounting threads and I had to drill the socket to remove it, ruining it in the process. It was already not functioning properly. But thanks for the suggestion of alternate wiring.

[Iain McNeill]

I think you might incur an additional cost for taking the board out. The tech may be worried about warranting their work if they can't complete the job. Dunno - I'd have a chat with them first.

It's really not that hard to swap a jack, especially if it's already in pieces. You can just heat up each contact and remove it individually in turn. Then use solder wick to clean/open up the holes.

Go on, have a go. DIY is fun

[tonynorie]

Iain - thanks for your advice and encouragement. I'm going to give it a try myself and my decision was based largely on what you wrote about it not being very difficult.

I'll report back to the forum with the outcome of my attempt -

Tony