Mackie 'W' taper Gain Pots

[Mars Amp Repair]

Hey Folks,
I'm working on a Mackie 1402VLZ4 mixer...I know, you're sorry .
All 6 Gain pots are intermittent. My experience with these guys is once they get super intermittent, they're uncleanable as the carbon track is just plain worn out or cracked.
Anyway, does anyone have a source for these guys? PN on side of pot is: 47Z103W 10K W-taper. 18mm square w/ 6mm diameter shaft, 18mm long D shaft w/5mm metal support collar. W taper for 1st half of rotation it acts like a reverse log taper and the rest of the rotation acts like a standard log taper...weird, huh!
Thanx, glen

[Delta362]

Try British Audio
https://britishaudio.com/products/ma...-1202-and-1402

[Mars Amp Repair]

I didn't actually find these pots here, but discovered that AudioLabGA.com carries Mackie parts as well as a bunch of other oddball brand parts.
eg: Aston Microphones, Behringer, Bugera, Crown, DBX, Fender, Harman, Hartke, HK, JBL, Kenwood, Klark, Teknik,, Klipsch, Lab Gruppen Lake, Mackie, Midas, QSC, Pioneer, Samson, Sansui, Tannoy, TC, Electronic, TC, Helicon, Turbosound, TC, Electronic, TC Helicon.
I'm sure some of you have also used them through the years.
I'm always very thankful that there are sites like this that handle the stuff we cannot find anywhere other than having to order from China off of eBay.

[Mars Amp Repair]

Here's a pic of the interior of the W-Tape Mackie pot. The customer donated the mixer as the cost to repair was going to get too close to what he could purchase the newest version of this mixer.
As this became a store-stock unit AND it wasn't really old enough for the pots to be worn out, I decided to remove all the gain pots, clean, and Deox them to see if it would be successful.
Yes, this was a chore and if it didn't work, I would have just cannibalized the unit. So, nothing to lose but time.
It was successful. My take is that the damping goop from the shaft working its way down into the pot & contaminated, or at least interfered with the contact between the track and the sliding contact.
Find attached a pic of the conductive trace in the pot. You can clearly see the 3 different grades of taper. Wild how they can produce these.
Glen

[nevetslab]

Here's a pic of the interior of the W-Tape Mackie pot. The customer donated the mixer as the cost to repair was going to get too close to what he could purchase the newest version of this mixer.
As this became a store-stock unit AND it wasn't really old enough for the pots to be worn out, I decided to remove all the gain pots, clean, and Deox them to see if it would be successful.
Yes, this was a chore and if it didn't work, I would have just cannibalized the unit. So, nothing to lose but time.
It was successful. My take is that the damping goop from the shaft working its way down into the pot & contaminated, or at least interfered with the contact between the track and the sliding contact.
Find attached a pic of the conductive trace in the pot. You can clearly see the 3 different grades of taper. Wild how they can produce these.
Glen

A tip of my hat to ya! even though I don't wear hats. That Gain pot on virtually ALL of the Mackie Mixers has been dodgy. I'd have to go back thru my service notes to see how many of that pot I've had to replace over the years. When I was at Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood running their Equipment Maintenance shop (separate from doing tech work for the studios), the Mackie 1604 had become a psuedo-industry standard production mixer in town, and fleets of that 1604 mixer was flowing thru the shop. I'm sure I had replaced that pot on many, though when removing them, I'd always op for pulling the pot apart for cleaning as I tend to do with most pots. Except for those who have the shaft swaged into place so you can't get them apart, typical of Asian pots. Tends to be that same control on most other inexpensive mixers as well.

That's reassuring that the full teardown succeeded!!

Thanks for the tip regarding Audio Labs of Georgia! I've used them over the years but didn't think about sourcing replacement pots and other items as you mentioned.