spilled beer on the mixer!!!!!!

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:13 am

^ that's not really true. when circuit boards are made, they have to clean the flux off the boards, some methods use water with a specialized detergent in them. people assume electronics are more fragile than they really are. there are parts you have to be careful around, relays, for example almost always have to be installed AFTER the board is cleaned because they have mechanical parts.

water will NOT corrode most electronic parts.

the crossfader probably isn't steel or a metal that has iron in it, so there's no fear of rust.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:24 am

I know its not in the same boat but in 1994 my Korg DT-3 guitar tuner drowned in a pool of Granvile Island Pale Ale. Washed it out with water and I still use it to this day!

lunabass · Post by **lunabass** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:56 am

i tipped half a schooner of coopers pale ale into my then brand new dell laptop about 2 years ago.
i turned it straight off, tipped it upside down, watched all the beer drain out thru the keyboard! - yes i was shitting myself, and left it overnight upside down in a warm room.

next day i turned that sucker on and it worked fine...this machine is still my main lappy and gets used everyday without a problem (besides a few sticky keys and the smell)

ghast · Post by **ghast** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 9:02 am

Thanks for the help, guys. it's out in the sun all day today, we'll see how it goes. Its just a dumb behringer for my pa, but i'll keep my fingers crossed.

Patch · Post by **Patch** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:48 am

Buy some switch cleaner. You can get it in aerosol cans from places like Maplins/RadioShack, etc... Use that along with a Cotton Bud (I got no idea why someone earlier suggested using a rapper from Tribe Called Quest to do this - sounds expensive???) and you're laughing.

I do this regularly with my DJ mixers - keep them faders smoooooooth...

Really though - if it happens again - DO NOT SWITCH IT ON UNTIL YOU'VE CLEANED IT UP AND LET IT DRY!!

smartass303 · Post by **smartass303** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:09 am

lunabass wrote:i tipped half a schooner of coopers pale ale into my then brand new dell laptop about 2 years ago.
i turned it straight off, tipped it upside down, watched all the beer drain out thru the keyboard! - yes i was shitting myself, and left it overnight upside down in a warm room.

next day i turned that sucker on and it worked fine...this machine is still my main lappy and gets used everyday without a problem (besides a few sticky keys and the smell)

This is so Punkrock.

Love it!

303

lunabass · Post by **lunabass** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:31 pm

smartass303 wrote: This is so Punkrock.

Love it!

303

it wasn't very punkrock at the time...i was almost in tears!

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:36 pm

should've sprung for the rane w/ magnetics!

love their manual - "the faders will not be hurt by spilling BAD THINGS on them"

dphouse84 · Post by **dphouse84** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:55 pm

+1 on cleaning with alcohol and keeping all dry.
adding more water to electronics

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:13 pm

ironwill2000 wrote:What are all you fuckers on crack??? DO NOT PUT WATER ON IT... You only clean the non working parts (i.e. outer surfaces) with water, even soapy water. H2O will cause corrosion on any of the components if it gets inside and the slider contacts especially.

Unplug it, take the cover and knobs off, wash any affected working and electrical parts off with rubbing alcohol only and clean with a Q-Tips until all of the sticky stuff is gone. If you cant get the sticky stuff out of small areas, soak them in an alcohol bath and use toothpicks to get the gunk out.

Set it out in the sun to dry for a day. If there is any moisture outside, set it in a window in sunlight to dry or on the dash of your car.

Thankfully ironwill2000 chimed in here!
Beer is very corrosive ...
So is water (if only I knew at the time).

I cast my memory back to my poor old Dell 5150 (RIP) which copped a WHOLE Crown Lager directly into its keyboard while running. I got carried away with jamming on Live and the Yamaha 01X (control surface) while showing off in front of mates. Nasty! My buddies looked on with horror as I did the "hold down the power button for 4 seconds trick" to turn it off ASAP.

Fortunately there was a chapter in the manual about what to do if liquids enter the unit. I immediately dissembled the laptop and discovered beer made its way right through to the battery compartment! Damn! I paniced, unaware of the corrosive nature of water, I lightly washed effected components carefully in the sink ... After a nervous 48 hour wait to see if it came back to life when powered on, fortunately it powered up and continued working for another year or so.

Eventually it died a year later due to a cracked mainboard while on tour. The Dell 5150 was plagued with a known design fault that would eventually screw it up anyway (cooling system would get clogged with dust and it would overheat unless you blew it out with compressed air regularly). I can't complain - I got 3.5 years of 24/7 hardcore DAW use out of that machine and that was with moving it at least twice a day.

Lesson: Consider getting an "Amenities table" for your drinks and ancillaries! It should be away from your gear but not so far away that you get lazy and get temped to keep drinks and suchlike near your gear.
; )

fishmonkey · Post by **fishmonkey** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:10 pm

ha ha, i've still got an old Zoom geetar effects unit that has a dodgy fader from a jamming beer spill 10 years ago...

unfortunately i didn't bother to do anything about it until days later, and it was too late!

i'd recommend lots of contact cleaner spray too; also in my experience it's good to use some contact cleaner lubricant afterwards on moving parts like pots... the straight contact cleaner seems to leave things a bit too dry, and they start cracklin again much sooner...

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 3:37 pm

jasefos wrote:Thankfully ironwill2000 chimed in here!
Beer is very corrosive ...
So is water (if only I knew at the time).

bullshit. prove it.

when your Dell motherboard was made one of the last steps is to wash it with water.

laird · Post by **laird** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:12 pm

letting your mixer sit for a long, long in water is a bad idea.
Washing the insides with water and letting it dry... no problem (again, assuming no power!)

nothing corrodes in the time it takes water to evaporate. have you ever EVER seen rust appear in an hour?

If you live in a humid area, then doing a last wash with some ethanol can help speed things along...

but you don't want to do the first wash in ethanol... high alcohol levels cause protein (like all the yeast in beer) to precipitate out of solution, which is exactly what you don't want: organic material sticking to your mixer innards instead of being diluted and washing out.

If you didn't let the beer dry out before trying to clean, then you wont need any soap or any scrubbing. 5 washes in water will remove all the gunk that could create power shorts or provide ample growth media for fungus, molds, etc...

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:49 pm

Beeringer!

There are companies that clean mixing, light desks by immersing them in water (distilled) and using ultrasound, heard mixed stories about it (reports that stuff starts fucking up after that treatment).

A friends mobile dropped in the canal here in Amsterdam, rinsed it out for her and next day opened it and cleaned everything with alcohol. everything inside was gold plated so i thought it would be sweet... Worked for a while but fucked up after a couple of weeks.

Good luck.
I always attach a sign to where my equipment is for my Live PA's: NO DRINKS ON THIS TABLE!

Oh yeah be glad it wasn't Coca-Cola.... disaster guaranteed. Pepsi no good either.

dhilsabeck · Post by **dhilsabeck** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:47 pm

thelike5 wrote:Alcohol no doubt, has caused many a similar fuck up. Just last week, some idiot manged to smack the mirror off of my Jetta's drivers side door while it was parked on the street. They had to be drunk because you couldn't simply hit a mirror off someones car on that street otherwise. $300 repair out of my own pocket. No note. Luckily, they managed to avoid hitting my car. Not wishing death on them but you have to be accountable, at least through Karma.

Odd. That reminds me of a few years back when I was out drinking with my brothers. By the end of the night we were breaking all sorts of things and we found like 6 empty bottles of Jim Beam of various capacities. We, of course, decided to throw them from his 9th floor balcony. Not content to merely break them on the pavement, my brother hauled an empty 1.75 liter towards a parked car and very cleanly knocked off the driver's side mirror. No note or apologies, I'm afraid. But my brother pissed in the corner of his living room that night, which may or may not suffice as karmic justice.

Sorry to hear you had to pay $300. That does suck, but thanks for the memories.