Hi everyone,

Like the title says, Have you ever come across a broken pitch wheel, or mod wheel, ever tried replacing the Pots (potentiometer) for ur controller, for which the production of spares were discontinued. Which actually means u dont get the whole set.

Well i did, me mentioning here somewhere about planned obsolescence, had me wondering about my old M-audio oxygen 49 Gen 3 controller which i kept aside cauz of the pitch wheel and mod wheel being screwed, also the rotary knobs too, but faders, buttons and keys works perfectly. I liked it a lot mainly bcauz its built quality, only exterior not the stuff inside, i will get to it in a min, i mean i could actually beat someone to death with that, and still it will only be half broken.

So, picked up the controller dusted it, and opened the fucker, pulled out the pots and went on a quest to find the correct one.


Like u see in pic. its B10k as usual but with 68 degree, which means that the resistive material is only pasted from 68 to 180 or so degrees, the resistance or voltage variation starts from 68 and end at 180, and on both ends there are dead zones with nothing, so we get nothing beyond that range. The black paint like layer in the pic. below is the carbon layer which wears out over time.



These are specially made for the product, which means its not commercially available, when the manufacturer discontinues the production of the model, for a few months until stock exists we are screwed. And have to get a new one, just because of the broken pots.

So the quest took me to not finding the correct pot, but ended up picking a normal B10k
which has mostly 300 degree rotation, and the usable range is all over the place, with knurled shaft rather than a solid one.



The problem with the knurled shaft pots is that is made for knobs, so they are a bit tight in movement, so they wont center quickly. But even if i ve gotten a solid shaft pot, the readings wont match cauz 0 ohms corresponds to midi value 0 and 10k to 127. Thats what happened with this one not the readings suit it was tight.



But i had a couple of A10k lying around, which had a solid shaft, so i used/installed them, it centered correctly at 64 but didnt get top and low values.
I got Pitch bend values 13 64 107, (-6528 0 5504) instead of 0 64 127 (-8192 0 8192).
And Mod wheel 0 -72 instead of 0-127

Fortunately there is Midi-Ox, i remapped PB, Mod values to the requirement.
Now it works as its supposed to.
I know A10k, B10k are different one being log and other linear, but in this case it didnt make much of a difference.

The reason i wanted to bring up this here, is to create an awareness of what we actually buy without the knowledge of whats inside, that we have no option of knowing so.
These products are made like toys, even worse. And its going to get worse over the years

This could have been so easy if M audio had used a normal pot, its not so hard, the volts just correspond to a specified value, doesn't necessarily have to be 0 ohms to be 0 midi, it could have been easily been mapped internally. But they did not. Even using an alternative like optical instead of mechanical part could last longer, but they wont and its against their agenda.

Now I have three working keyboard controllers including this a 12 Yo M audio, Just enough to say FU.

I just have to wait until my Roland A500 wears out, it has a joystick, that ll be much fun to work with.

 

Yep and when someone says "How the hell did you come up with that modulation?", you can just tell them "A10k, B10k are different one being log and other linear".

 

Damn that's exactly what i needed! thank you for this. Is there any chance you could explain how you remapped the PB and Mod values using Midi-Ox ?

 

I'm not going into the pot matter, but I would say it's not a completely satisfactory solution, you lose in anyway chuncks of resolution on a span of 128 values.
BTW pitch bend resolution should be 14 bits but in any case you lose about 25% res on pitch and 40%+ on modulation.
I had to try to solve a similar problem with a poorly midified piano (here the keyboard had this range skip problem), to no avail.
Replaced with an Avant Grand.

 

Sure, Assuming u already have know how to create a profile and add devices in midi ox . i ll get straight to the point.

For pitch bend u ll need to have two maps one for pitching down and other for up ( 0 to 64 and 64 to 127 or in other words -8192 to 0 and 0 to 8192), U can do this by clicking on "Midi data mapping transformations" on the top menu bar. A window will pop up. here u can insert events for the translation, by clicking the insert button.

Pitching down


Up


Enter the values for MSB, In my case as i mentioned earlier for my o2 49, i needed to translate 13 64 107 to 0 64 127, so there u can see the values.

For mod wheel i don't recommend it, unless u dont have any rotary knobs on ur controller. Because midi ox doesn't have a dedicated event for Modulation alone, so u just have to choose ctrl in the drop down. which will translate the same values to other controls as well.
For my O2 all the knobs stopped working except the faders and buttons which works perfectly, i just had to filter out the knobs cc, i never used them anyway,

Yes Dude, im aware of that. but its not very noticeable, i mean not noticeable at all. The stuff i make i usually use 2st rarely an oct or 7st. It translates well. i use it as tet. control, just didnt want to let go of it.

Edit:-
Important:
I forgot to mention to save the translation map. this map ll load up on the profile created, only when u save it to the or with profile too. Or u ll have to load the map every time.

 

Last edited: Aug 21, 2024

What you need is a dead unit with a good pot!

 

the part being made in-house by the manufacturer of the unit is very unlikely. Tracking down the correct part number from it's original manufacturer can be difficult, time-consuming, and even next to impossible. But all these component parts are usually made by a company that only deals with that one thing; because at such low volume making anything can be very expensive per piece. They just order them from a company with a factory where components like potentiometers, knobs, switches, electrical cords, etc; are all that factory makes.
Otherwise your M-Audio controller would cost about 4x whatever they were selling them for.

Probably pretty easy. I have a dead Radium 49 by pure coincidence.

 

Last edited: Aug 19, 2024

I honestly thought u wr being sarcastic, but now i get. U meant to salvage from an old unit. Yes Dude, that was the first thing i tried, i was unlucky. Unfortunately i couldn't use something from other manufacturers, because

 

Well said indeed, I had this NEKTAR .. pitch wheel had already replaced 3 times, and now I had to turned it off for good .
Nothing lasts forever .. the Quality just sucks nowadays

 

Yes, u r right. most of these parts are made in china, who gets their orders from some wholesaler who deals with these electronics. Companies/manufactures just buy from them, or just orders with specifics. The one who makes these on the other side has no clue for what he making it for,

 

These things are built just like a kids toy, they are very much (far much) different from other hardware like a guitar amp for ex. or even a DJ Mixer for that sake. Most of them operate under 5V so any sudden spike in voltage will also affect them. Its always better to keep the moisture away from these devices, esp. during the rainy seasons, to prevent oxidation.

 

They're built to be disposable I've generally had good luck with this kind if thing. I actually prefer to buy something I know I'll replace three times than pay three times as much for something that may break anyway. At least up to a point; a nice weighted action controller is a different situation.

 

The M-Audio ones weren't the best controllers, with all the serious options; but for $100-$200 they were very durable. You still see people using very old ones because they simply won't die. Water exposure and electrical issues aside of course, but those are unrelated causes of failure that really qualify as abuse. A bad potentiometer after 10 years of use is expected eventually. You can barely get a behringer out of the box without screwed up noisy pots.

 

Last edited: Aug 20, 2024

M-Audio is generally sturdier than Behringer, I'll grant you that. I've probably own 10 M-audio controllers over the years and they all broke within two years but hey, for the money honestly I'm still not really complaining. Eventually I just started buying them at pawn shops and I generally got my money's worth out of that.