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How to Clean a Vintage Audio Mixer

Cleaning a vintage audio mixer is necessary for many reasons. You may just wish to give your old mixer a spruce up so that it looks better and is nicer to use and handle. However, cleaning your mixer may be a more necessary task if, for example, your mixer's sound quality has deteriorated, or the machine has stopped working properly. Cleaning your audio mixer may not necessarily fix all of its problems, but it can often help.

Things You'll Need

  • Clean, dry, lint-less cloth or micro fiber towel
  • Cleaning solution (one that is suited to your mixer's outer material)
  • Screwdriver
  • Compressor or can of compressed air
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Instructions

    • 1

      Carefully wipe the surface of your mixer with your cloth or towel, taking extra care around the mixer's buttons and slides. Use a small amount of cleaning solution on your cloth if the outer surface of your mixer is badly soiled.

    • 2

      Unplug your mixer and remove the screws that hold the outer casing, using your screwdriver. Remove the outer casing carefully.

    • 3

      Move your mixer outside or to the garage so that the dislodged dust from your mixer will not contaminate or dirty any of your other equipment.

    • 4

      Apply the compressed air to all parts of the mixer's interior. Pay particular attention to the circuit boards and transistors, making sure that you get into all the little nooks and crannies created by the mixer's internal parts.

    • 5

      After a thorough removal of the mixer's interior dust, use Kontak to clean the electrical connectors, such as the input-output and XLR, or RCA, connectors.

    • 6

      Reattach the outer casing of your mixer once you have finished cleaning it. Cleaning your mixer once a year, on average, should help maintain its performance.

Recording Music

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