Cleaning contacts in CTC-11 tuner the right way

[Phil Nelson]

This came up in a thread about an eBay auction, but perhaps it deserves its own thread for the sake of anyone searching in the future.

Hand cleaning all of the contacts made a great improvement in my CTC-11's tuner. Before this, I could only tune in a station between channels. I had tried to clean it by spraying some DeOxit and turning the tuner a bunch of times, but that was useless.

Now the tuning is right on the money and everything about the picture seems crisper. The fine tuner even works, which was not the case before. (Note to self: don't expect fine tuning to work well between channels.)

I sprayed some DeOxit into a little container and dipped Q-tips into it. This is all done with the tuner unbolted from the chassis and the shields off, of course -- easy in this case because the shields were already missing, grrr.

A normal Q-tip wouldn't fit in some places, so I tore off most of the fluff and wound what was left very tightly around the stick. Then I sparingly dipped, gently rubbed, moved the tuner a crack, rubbed a little more, etc. I went through two or three dozen Q-tips.

I also whittled a popsicle stick into a skinny shape with a little flat spot on the end of a hook. It was the only way to reach a couple of places. Every wipe or two, I'd clean the end of the stick by wiping on white paper.

Then I cleaned everything inside and out with alcohol to remove any lingering DeOxit from my unsuccessful spray attempt.

Then I went back over all of the contacts with electronic lubricant/conditioner.

Then I cleaned and sparingly re-lubed the little cams (wrong term?) in front that move the springy clicker gizmo (right term). The setscrew in the shaft front had worked a bit loose. Tightening it removed some slop from the tuning action.

Maybe some day I'll find correct shields. For the moment, I made caveman replacements out of heavy copper foil from a craft store.

This took a long time. I don't think a quick dab or two with a Q-tip would have done the job. I worked slowly using a strong light with a big magnifying lens, turning the tuner every which way as needed to reach everything.

Thanks again to the folks who suggested that I quit being lazy and try this.

Phil Nelson