Pro Audio Design Forum

Hey guys, I had one of my Pico's Front panel got loose and I'm pretty sure it messed up the pots, pulling on them.

I just put the new replacement ones in and I'm still getting some, much less than before I replaced them, weirdness. As they I turn the pots they sometimes jump up or down, especially the Threshold and Gain pots. The "broken" ones were doing the same, but much much worse. Why would my new pots be doing the same? Sometimes they seem to do the jumping even while not being touched.

No it is my DIY unit.

That seems to have done the trick I put wires between the threshold and gain pot and they are acting normal as far as I can tell.

I might be mistaken but I can't find the calibration procedure for the Pico SE on here anymore, while I have it on the bench I figured I should re-calibrate it with my new DMM, I did this before I had a Fluke meter so I'm not 100% confident it's calibrated properly.

Thanks for the quick help, I really enjoy my Picos. My second unit sits on auto across my mix bus at one of my studios. I have it set the same for every song and I just trim my master fader into it to get the little bit of 1:1.2 compression, sounds fantastic.

raf wrote: If the pots were directly soldered to the PCB and got stressed it could have broken traces at the pot pads...
If that happens, you will need to wire the pots to the next points in the circuit, bypassing the cracked traces.
rf

Wow, it's been a while since I tried to fix this guy up.

I did the bypassing and it didn't help. I just cracked it open again tonight, removed the bypass wires and tried flowing solder on the top and bottoms of pads by the pots and it works a little better but randomly the amount of compression jumps up and down (like it's been doing), but now it's happening without me touching the knobs, what could be causing that? I'm super stumped on this, I also reflowed a bunch of other parts just in case but I'm starting to feel like something else is messed up.

Also while I'm in it, I made mine with the 1:7 ratio mod, I've never used it above 1:2, how do I undo the mod, I can't find any of the old posts about that.

Thanks for your continued support!

-Ben

Yes I replaced the pots and I never got it back to working perfectly.

Would cracked traces have problems even when I'm not touching the unit?