Common household product that can be used for pot lube?

[daz]

Is there any sort of lube one might have around the house/garage that could be used to lubricate pots?

[glebert]

My favorite pot cleaner is turpentine, and it usually works on frozen pots. I don't know if it is a lubricant or just softens up the lube in the pot, but either way it works well for me.

[daz]

Yeah, thats not a lube. I have cleaner but it doesn't have lube in it like deoxit and it washes out the original lube. So hence the question. I know there are products i can but but i just wanna know if i can use something like vasaline or auto grease etc. I don't think anything like that is conductive so i would think they should work if i remove the pot cover and dab a bit on the tracks.

[R.G.]

Hmmm. It's both a desert topping AND a floor wax.

I went off down this rabbit hole for a bit. Best guesses based on that are > vaseline, as thin as you can possibly get it; > mineral oil, also as thin as you can get it. No food oils, obviously; ditto waxes, which would contribute to the wiper contact riding up on the film. Mixing a bit of vaseline in naptha if you have it might make a thin layer easier. You want the lubricant film to be as thin as possible, and easily displaced by the contact pressure of the wiper.

I tried, but could not come up with other suggestions. Mineral oil is probably usable as an emergency field expedient, as the lower viscosity would let it trickle away over time.

[daz]

Hmmm. It's both a desert topping AND a floor wax.

I went off down this rabbit hole for a bit. Best guesses based on that are > vaseline, as thin as you can possibly get it; > mineral oil, also as thin as you can get it. No food oils, obviously; ditto waxes, which would contribute to the wiper contact riding up on the film. Mixing a bit of vaseline in naptha if you have it might make a thin layer easier. You want the lubricant film to be as thin as possible, and easily displaced by the contact pressure of the wiper.

I tried, but could not come up with other suggestions. Mineral oil is probably usable as an emergency field expedient, as the lower viscosity would let it trickle away over time.

I mentioned vasaline because the stuff i see in pots hen i disassemble them for the first time looks like it could be vasaline with the same sorta consistency. The considerations i would think are 1-that it doesn't react in a bad way with the carbon track, 2-that it's 100% non conductive and 3- it doesn't as u mentioned cause a barrier between the wipers and the tracks. I think vasaline should be fine in all those respects but B4 i try it i wanted to see if anyone here has used it or something else successfully.

[Helmholtz]

Here's my opinion:
The carbon track of a pot doesn't need a greasy lube. New pots typically don't come with a lubed track.
Anything sticky on the track will collect dust and cause noise after a while.
But mechanical parts like the shaft do need lubrication.
Unthinned vaseline on the shaft works well but might not provide enough friction in some cases (not viscous enough).
In any case the pot needs to be disassembled.

[daz]

Here's my opinion:
The carbon track of a pot doesn't need a greasy lube. New pots typically don't come with a lubed track.
Anything sticky on the track will collect dust and cause noise after a while.
But mechanical parts like the shaft do need lubrication.
Unthinned vaseline on the shaft works well but might not provide enough friction in some cases (not viscous enough).
In any case the pot needs to be disassembled.

Well, maybe. But the reason i asked is once i started using WD40 "specialist" contact cleaner and being told it has no lubricant in it that the track would wear faster. And it did on my strat where i mostly used it. Within maybe a months or a year i took t apart to see what i couldnt get rid of the static anymore with cleaner, the wipers had wore down a fair amount and the inner metal track looked pretty worn out. So i just thought the cleaner was to blame. Never had that issue with deoxit.

[Helmholtz]

Never had that issue with deoxit.

That's why I always use and recommend Deoxit D5. Clean the track and wiper with D5 on a cotton swab (Q-Tip).
I do not recommend any WD-40 products for pots.

[R.G.]

The rabbit hole I went down looking at pot lube substitutes turned up a lot of funny-looking worms. As both of you probably know, there is a whole world of specialist oils and greases. Nye Lubricants https://www.nyelubricants.com/ has some amazingly specific stuff, for one. Very pricey, but they seem to have put in the thinking as opposed to just relabeling vaseline. There are many other pot/slider lubes out there. The big issues seem to revolve around lube/damping greases for the shaft or slider parts and track/wiper lubes to lessen wear and tear on the actual track.

There were a whole lot of comments about cleaners washing out all the lube, both shaft/slider and track, and the need to put something back in. Some people were practically poetic about the difference in exactly which lube made the shaft of a cleaned pot feel most silky smooth and/or damped.

Carbon tracks are self-lubricating, but they do this by the graphite fraction letting small platelets of graphite slide over the other graphite platelets, wearing away the soft surface. Some kind of low-film-strength and high viscosity lube would cut down on the speed of the wear.

And a whole lot of people claiming that WD-40 is not a lubricant, it's devil-urine.

[Chuck H]

Helmholtz is onto it. Normal wear on the element tracks and wipers is to be expected. Dutrius (particles, dust, etc.) can be blown out of a pot with any kind of inert compressed gas or air. But not if you have lube on the element tracks. In fact if you have lube on the tracks it can hold conductive solids dust on the tracks and increase wear and foul performance. You can often get a little more performance from a failing pot temorarily with a squirt of WD40 lubricant but it won't be long lived and will shorten pot life overall. Also, some products can soften the track material and shorten wear life. But really, do avoid any lubricant on the element tracks regardless of what anyone else says. The companies that make the pots don't put any lube on the element tracks for a reason. I think they know best.

Getting lube on the shaft is a problem for pots that can't be fully disassembled. As mentioned, shaft lube is typically of a very high viscosity. Actually thick and sticky on the fingers in my experience. Vasoline is reasonably temperature stable and will work as lube but will have a very loose rotational feel. I've proposed heating it and melting bees wax into it to increase viscosity. Getting into the shaft mechanics of pots that can't be disassebled is the problem. For this I've proposed heating the shaft area (heat gun?) and attempting to wick some melted vasoline/bees wax lube into the shaft. You might even try dunking the shaft into a hot pot of the melted lube and then cleaning excess off the outside.

But as for "cleaning" pots I say always blow them out and use a non lube cleaner that is known not to soften element track material. Like the D5.

As an aside I actually LIKE my guitar pots loose. With reasonable technique you shouldn't be accidentally turning the pot and I can hear if it's rotated off full up and I check periodically anyway to see that it is full up. So then with a loose pot I have easy pinky control for adjustment whenever I want to turn the pot. I don't like a stiff rotation because I have to actually grab the pot to turn it. So I have to take my hand fully off the strings and that's usually when I drop my pick I actually used to use WD40 to to loosten my guitar pots. A tiny dab at the seam of the shaft gap and a few turns back and forth usually thins the lube in the shaft. Now I just buy Bourns "guitar" pots which have a looser feel already. They have a slighly different taper than other pots that I like as well.

[Helmholtz]

One more thing:

There are dedicated "Fader Lube" products (e.g. from CAIG).
From the description I understand they are primarily meant for conductive plastic tracks (as opposed to carbon tracks).
I've occasionally used FaderLube on carbon track pots after applying D5.
When applied on a Q-Tip it leaves a thin oily film on the track.
I didn't really notice a benefit compared to D5 alone.

I think the main reasons for pot wear and noise are:
1) Dust/dirt between wiper and track,
2) Corrosion of metal contact parts (typically 3 points). Here's where D5 excels.

After cleaning I sometimes "seal" a pot using electrical tape to prevent dust from getting inside.

[daz]

I like pots that are very loose too, Thats one reason i don't just replace them unless i can't get them to sound clean, because if i buy a new one i never know how tight it may be. I've been able to get some pots to feel looser by modding them in various ways, but it's hit or miss and a PITA. Anyways, guess i'll just try blowing them out. The metal track of the wiper however i think does need lube because mine was very worn. So i may try some vasaline on it next time i disassemble a pot.

[DrGonz78]

If it’s an old pot with wooden wafers and can be taken apart then it will time to get creative. First I only would use a tiny dab of WD40 on the wafer fitting to make them swell more and hopefully be less brittle. The actual track of carbon I would clean with a good clean pencil eraser. Very light as to not remove the good stuff. For lubricant I would find an old Carmax or lip balm. These are things easily found in your home and the carmax will freshen up the smell of the amp. I would work in my lithium grease instead and even then I am mostly unsatisfied getting pots relubricated. Experiment with something and see what works.

[Helmholtz]

If it’s an old pot with wooden wafers and can be taken apart then it will time to get creative.

Maybe I'm not old enough (at 73 as of today), but I've never seen a pot with a wooden wafer.
Typical wafer material is FR-2 (phenolic resin) board.

[nosaj]

I've phenolic in pots that I swore was wood but it was not. Even looked like it had grain like wood.

nosaj