Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

These synths have the crappiest sliders. Does anyone know if the Odyssey uses the same sliders or have any recommendations for smoother sliders as replacements?

I always thought they were the same as in the Odyssey. They're nearly impossible to open up and clean without breaking the metal tines that connect them to the boards. The only replacements I know of are here: http://synthrestore.co.uk/products.htm#sliders. I'm not sure if Phil is selling the kits for these yet: http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2008/02 ... y-cms.html but you could probably adapt it for the Avatar. It sucks that a lot of Arps came with such crappy sliders and the new ones are so pricey; I've got a few projects that are waiting for me to afford some stupid sliders.

Thanks for the info. Those Lumina sliders are damn cool. Guess I'll have to contact CMS.

schmidtc wrote:I always thought they were the same as in the Odyssey. They're nearly impossible to open up and clean without breaking the metal tines that connect them to the boards. The only replacements I know of are here: http://synthrestore.co.uk/products.htm#sliders. I'm not sure if Phil is selling the kits for these yet: http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2008/02 ... y-cms.html but you could probably adapt it for the Avatar. It sucks that a lot of Arps came with such crappy sliders and the new ones are so pricey; I've got a few projects that are waiting for me to afford some stupid sliders.

I agree with Z - Sadly it seems most of their sliders were c**p (they look just like the ones used in some cheap TVs of the era) - the sliders used in the Omni-2 are just as bad. It's not just the sliders either - clearly their tantalum caps were cheap and nasty too, after replacing so many, and hearing of so many others with the same issues in several ARP products. It's a crying shame - but probably good news for parts supplier/reconditioning specialists such as the infamous Mr Cirocco

I'm agree that these sliders are very hard to open and desolder but if you do it with care is possible to open them without break anything. I've restored an ARP Odyssey ( that it's for sale on the classifieds forum ) and I've opened each slider ( it has 32 ) and in only a few of them I had problems. The bad thing is that synthstore only sells bags of 10 sliders or full sets. So if you need only two you have to buy 10 . Here is a picture of one slider opened ( before and after cleaning )

Good job.
Ten sliders for 30UKP don´t seem a bad deal when the other supplier sells lookalikes for 13USD a piece.
http://www.synthfool.com/store/sliderpop.html
The Synthrestore pots seem to be sourced from the Far-East (I don´t recognize the logo), but the others are made by CTS. With luck you might still find them at Farnell, RS, Digi-Key and such.

Just tell that I bought one of this "10 sliders bag" at synthestore and the are very good. Synthfool sell original parts , this is the reason that they are more expensive, at synthestore are "remake" ,