Blog Hoskins

Repairing the Volume Control on a Crosley HiFi

The volume knob on our Crosley HiFi hadn't worked for ages so I declared in a rage that it would be fixed.  I opened it up and found a similar looking rotary encoder for €1 on ebay.  Search for 'Rotary Encoder'.

Open the front gently with a screwdriver

Remove the screws on the next panel

Being very careful, disconnect the connecting wires at the base (don't pull the wire)

You can walk out the larger connect using a screwdriver at the base and prying it slowly

Now with the pcb removed, take off the front plastic volume and tuning knobs and remove the 6 outer screws on the back pcb (ignoring the others screws on the board).  Here's where you now have to desolder the broken encoder pot...

I had to snip the 3 little legs of mine, then using pliers, solder the tips and slowly pull them out (making sure not to remove the solder pads).  The larger legs, for some reason the solder wouldn't melt until I held the iron on the actual pad for what seemed like ages.  Not sure why that was but I managed to get the thing out eventually. 

Then solder the new encoder into place.  I had to file the main legs down on mine down to get it to fit.

The broken encoder (with the legs snipped);

After putting it all back together again, everything should now be working like new.  Except for some reason my volume is now in reverse, which probably means there are different types of rotary encoders, but as it was my first time working with them I'm pretty happy.