Bizarre Joystick problem - Pitch goes up at random

murcuh · Post by **murcuh** » Sat Jul 28, 2018 4:57 am

So a few days ago i started having this problem; any sound that's allowed to bend it's pitch through the joystick, slowly starts bending upwards by itself. It's completely random, and if i move the joystick a little bit, it goes back down. It's weird because normally, the pich wouldn't go up until the joystick is moved up a third of the way. As any krome does.

So i started a project on Cubase 5, added a midi track and started recording without really doing anything; suddenly, under de Pitchbend tab of the key editor, i start to see it adding values that slowly go up (if 127 is the max value, 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and so on). As if i were bending the joystick myself. Then as soon as i touch it, it goes back to 0.

Normally it happens after i bend the joystick down, wich i do a lot. But it can go seconds, or minutes without starting to display this behaviour.

This is SUPER anoying as it changes the tuning of a sound by cents and sometimes a whole step up. I don't have a warranty anymore, so i'm thinking of opening it up and see if there's something wrong with it.
Any tips? I have a gig on Chile in a few months and i need to solve this ASAP as rehearsals have already started and it's distracting for all the orchestra.

voip · Post by **voip** » Sat Jul 28, 2018 7:42 am

This will probably require a joystick replacement or repair.

bradkorg · Post by **bradkorg** » Sat Jul 28, 2018 11:52 am

Joystick use 2 (x horizontal-y vertical-axis) potentiometers, buildup dirty contacts causing random resistance fluctations, hence effects.

Simple solution: turn/move the pitch-x horizontal stick many dozens times fully left-right fast to clean the internal contacts and also y-axis up/down stick.
That should fix it enough, if it really is stucking dirt inside the potmeter, than open the krome and contactspray the potmeters.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q ... entiometer

murcuh · Post by **murcuh** » Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:25 am

bradkorg wrote:Joystick use 2 (x horizontal-y vertical-axis) potentiometers, buildup dirty contacts causing random resistance fluctations, hence effects.

Simple solution: turn/move the pitch-x horizontal stick many dozens times fully left-right fast to clean the internal contacts and also y-axis up/down stick.
That should fix it enough, if it really is stucking dirt inside the potmeter, than open the krome and contactspray the potmeters.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q ... entiometer

Thank you, breadkorg. Today i opened my krome, and i contactsprayed both potentiometers. It was a bit hard for my cause i have no experience doing this but, that really did it! Thanks a lot! You're the real deal, man.