How To Fix P&G Faders on a Mackie Control
Fader #2 Failed Calibration
I had big plans for this weekend… I was going to run some cables and hook up some more of my gear in my new home studio. I got the cables run, but then I noticed a major problem with my Mackie Control. Three of the faders were messed up. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but if you’ve come across this article from a search engine, you probably already know. I’ll try: Basically, when you run the fader upwards from -Infinity to +6 it get’s all funky feeling around Unity (0.0dB).
A few years ago I called Mackie to get a replacement fader for one that had the same issue. They happily shipped one out… at a price-tag of around $100… and explained how easy it was to replace- just open the unit, unplug the old fader, plug in the new one, and you’re good to go. (I’ve since learned that the price has come down considerably and is now $40.00 plus shipping so keep that in mind as you evaluate your fader situation).
This time around I had 3 funky faders (one truly funky, and 2 slightly funky)… and I wasn’t about to shell out that much dough without at least trying to fix them on my own. As I was finishing up I realized that I should probably document and share this with everyone, since I’ve been bailed out MANY times by some random blogger announcing a quick fix to one of life’s problems. Here is a detailed step-by-step to get you back up and running if you’ve got the same problem.
Thanks to all those who are contributing to the article by leaving some comments! I’ll keep updating as better methods come in.
First, I need to mention that there are 2 distinct different problems that you could be seeing.
- The fader motor is no longer functioning (completely dead fader syndrome).
- The fader motor is functioning, but the fader doesn’t move freely along the path from top to bottom.
I will address both issues, but keep in mind that #2 is much easier to fix then #1.
You will need:
- A Phillip’s screwdriver (or screw-gun, if you’re careful)
- Needle-nose pliers (bent worked well for me)
- A Flat-Head screwdriver
- Hex key that fits the hex head screws above and below the fader (1/16 standard: Thanks, Adam)
- A smaller jeweler-size flat-head screwdriver (just for prying, other tools will work)
- Some good music
- Some time (1-2 hours if you go slow).
My choice of music was Ryan Adams… I suggest something similar.
So, here we go. You’ll need a place to hold a bunch of screws.
- UNPLUG THE UNIT. Don’t blame me if you skip this step and electrocute yourself.
- Take off the fader cap for whatever channel you need to fix. No need to take off the others.
- (Updated Method) Take off all the screws on the bottom of the unit and all around the side, the raised screws in the back of the unit can stay in but do take off all the flush screws in the back of the unit along the bottom.When you are done the entire bottom comes off and you will have a nice wide open space to work on the unit as the entire top comes off with the jog/shuttle wheel intact to the top metal housing. That way you won’t have to balance the bottom and the top and try to keep the ribbon cable on the jog/shuttle wheel from ripping. (At this point, discharge any static electricity by touching the inside base of the unit.)
- Find your broken fader by counting (duh). It’s attached by some snap connectors. You can remove either end, just be careful not to pull the wires out. Grab it by the plastic only! Use the pliers if you have to. If you rip your wires out don’t blame me, you were warned.
- If your motor works, skip this step. If your motor was not working at all before (completely dead fader syndrome), try re-attaching the cable and checking the connections. (I’m not instructing you to carefully plug in the unit and test it at this time, but that is something to think about). If you still don’t have any motor function in that fader, switch the fader end of the cable with one of the faders that is working during the fader calibration at start-up. See if it will work from another channel. If it starts working, put it back together and go make some music, if not, read on.
- Using the hex key, remove the screws that are holding the fader in place. It should fall into the unit, that’s okay.
- You should now be holding the fader in your hand. Set the rest of the unit aside. You’ll notice that the fader has a hard plastic base, housed in a metal casing.
- Pry the little tabs up that are holding the metal casing in place with the jeweler’s screwdriver. Two of the tabs are right next to the solder points for the fader motor, DO NOT MESS UP THESE SOLDER POINTS! If your motor wasn’t working (dead fader syndrome) then check these solder points. There’s a black & red that attach up to the perf-board above the motor. Re-solder carefully if necessary. If you don’t know exactly what your doing, Google soldering and re-evaluate (maybe consider calling Mackie). It is VERY easy to fry the perf-board so don’t try it if you don’t know how.
- When all of the tabs are bent away, the fader should slide out of it’s metal housing. Be very careful, as the metal housing is there to protect some VERY fragile parts inside.
- The main culprit is dirt and crud in the fader (which you can clean out now), or a bent or mangled grounding cable (the brown ribbon cable you see in the pictures attached to the fader). This is the cable that allows for touch sensitivity. When you touch the fader, you’re grounding the circuit via this cable. For some reason they have a habit of getting bent, kinked, and generally messed up inside that metal housing.
- Gently straighten any kinks or bends out of this cable with whatever method you choose. Personally, I just used my fingers to bend it into a nice gentle arc. Replace the metal housing and check your work. If you think you’ve got it, bend the tabs back into place. (Again, being very careful around those motor solder points).
- Reverse the other steps to re-assemble everything, and you’re good to go.
- Make some music!
(You’ll notice that the first few pictures show my unit opened from the top, which is more difficult since you have to be very cautious with the connections for the jog/shuttle wheel. Opening from the bottom as mentioned in step #3 is definitely the way to go. Thanks to Adam for pointing this out.)
Hi,
Thanks for this guide!! I have just bought a second hand MCU + extender which worked fine for a couple of weeks but now 2 faders started to have this syndrome. Following your guide showed some funky grounding cables.
Herwig
You’re welcome! Feel free to fill in any blanks and I’ll add them to the post.
Hi James,
I own an MCU since 2005 but the first fader started to get stucked. I wish I found your instructions sooner because I disassembled the MCU myself and made some mistakes you warn about in your guide, and caused some damaged to my unit that I now have to also fix.
Well I finally managed to pull the fader apart, and to my surprise the problem is with the little string that the motor rolls in and out. Somehow the string turned itself into a knot and I haven’t been able to untie it! :O( I’m afraid my fader might be beyond repair, or at least beyond my basic repair skills. I wonder if there’s any place online I can purchase a fader like this? Do you know?
Thank you,
Ricardo
Hey Ricardo, I looked around online and I couldn’t find a replacement anywhere other then direct from Mackie. If you do have to get one through them make sure you tell them that it’s a MCU from 2005 and not one of the newer models, I’m pretty sure they have slightly different (upgraded) faders. Fixing that string would really be a pain. Good luck if you have to go that route. Probably faster just to call Mackie.
Thanks for this! Just fixed a kinked grounding cable in 30 minutes with no problems. A soldering fork works well for prying those little metal tabs up.
First let me just start off by saying thank you for taking the time to post this.
If I can make some what I think are very important improvements to the directions. Do not take off any of the top screws at all as shown in the first picture prying the metal away from the scrub wheel area will make it very difficult to work on and like me you will have a good chance of ripping your cables away from the jog/shuttle wheel.
Take off all the screws on the bottom of the unit and all around the side, the raised screws in the back of the unit can stay in but do take off all the flush screws in the back of the unit along the bottom.
When you are done the entire bottom comes off and you will have a nice wide open space to work on the unit as the entire top comes off with the jog/shuttle wheel intact to the top metal housing. That way you won’t have to balance the bottom and the top and try to keep the ribbon cable on the jog/shuttle wheel from ripping.
The size of the hex is metric size 2.0 but I am sure people can figure that one out. You will also need some dikes to disconnect the strap that holds the wires of three of the faders together at a time.
I had the miss fortune after taking fixing fader one having fader 5 raise to the top and slap back to the top and say it needs repair. It isn’t dead and not moving sluggish either? Strange!
Thanks again for posting, this and taking the extra time to help out others. I can post pictures if that helps anyone.
Sorry the hex is a 1/16 standard not 2.0 metric.
One other thing these are not Penny & Giles faders, just the caps are they outsourced them in China and worked with Penny & Giles and then manufactured themselves to make it cheaper. If you look on the board underneith it says Peny & Giles (not even spelled correctly) Controls Ltd. PGF100D/PCB MTG D460591/D 89402062 Made in China.
I know that from speaking with Mackie and Penny & Giles at an AES conference in NYC.
The replacement fader cost me $52 including shipping from Mackie so maybe cost has come down from $100. The replacement fader still says Peny (sp) & Giles Controls Ltd the new number is PGF M2000/PCB MTGD480591/D 890805212 Made in China.
Probably not that useful but since someone asked.
This is great input, thanks for contributing! I’ll update the article and add this in tomorrow. Thanks!
Thanks so much for posting this. This has happened to both of the MCs that I’ve ordered so far. Mackie quoted me $45+shipping for a fader motor, but was your $100 for the entire fader? Also, the way they described it on the phone was basically, “take off the back and pop in the new fader” — they could be oversimplifying. Have you found a simpler way to do this?
This posting is to help fix your unit without having to order new ones. The typical issues with these faders (from what I’ve seen with my unit over the fast 5 years) is just a bending of the grounding wire. When I had to order my replacement fader it was over 4 years ago, and (if memory serves correctly), it was near the $100 price mark. Perhaps my memory is a bit off, but I would say not by much. Anyway, the idea is to feel comfortable opening your own unit and seeing what the issue is and trying to fix it yourself first without ordering replacement parts right away like I did the first time.
Thanks for this guide!
Thank you so much for posting this! Getting replacement faders is a pain – fader 8 has been failing calibration when I start up, sometimes fixable by trying to move it by hand when switching the unit on, but sure enough, followed your guide and it was a wonky ground wire. You’ve saved me a fortune, thanks!
I have an MCU and one extender and fader #6 on the extender started to act up, so I am lucky that I found this by searching on Google. Not only are you saving people money by posting this, but also the time it takes to wait for a replacement; I was able to clean my fader in about 30 minutes (I had all the tools necessary at my disposal). Thanks much, your pictures were a great help while I was in the process of taking the fader apart and putting it back together.
Hi, thanks for the helping hand. I just bought a MCU that had issue on 3 faders.
2 of them were getting stuck towards the bottom, and one of them was not reading the position properly when I move it, but would move fine if controlled by the computer….
With the ones getting stuck it looks like the plastic casing of the fader (the whole base) bent so little that you can’t even notice but because the area where the motor is located is tighter for the car it starts catching in the bottom.
This is how to fix it:
- Open the fader, take the metal casing out…
- Take the railing off by pushing it up with a little screw driver from the OPPOSITE side to the motor (the top side of the fader). It pops out easily. Be careful with the string.
- Put a very little piece of cardboard (around 1mm tall or even less) of top of the hole where the top side of the railing goes into the plastic casing. This way you’ll be pushing the whole rail further from the bottom, with no operational side effects. The height of the cardboard depends on how much the car is touching the case. Be careful not to let the paper stick out of that little hole, you’re gonna be obstructing the car and losing important fader area.
- Put the rail back in place, don’t forget the little ruber stoppers at the ends. It clicks in easily.
- Close it up, etc.
In the one that wasn’t reading properly I noticed that the axle from the motor where the sensor is was kind of bent, so the mini-cinema (shutter) would move sideways with the movement of the car. I just pushed the axle gently with a screw driver until it was in better shape. Finally the shutter wasn’t moving sideways in the sensor that much.
And now I have a 100% operational MCU!
Any chance you have any kind of info of fix the LCD screen? Mine has garbaled characters and a portion of the display doesn’t show. I’m hoping this is an easy fix.
Thanks,
G
James,
Thanks so much for this guide! I just got a used one very cheap with some funky faders, your guide will make it easy to clean at least, and replace if necessary.
Eli
Hi!
Here’s my problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mALUtn9DmXI
This fader un brand new as the 5th and 6th!
What should I do?
Thanks!
Hey, sorry it took me so long to get back to you… been crazy recently, got married a little bit ago and just been a whirlwind since then. Anyway, that looks to me like more of a logic / chip problem then a physical fader issue (though please don’t be mistaken, I am by no means an expert on these things). If that were my unit, I’d be on the phone to Mackie right away. Good luck.
To Jesus:
I had the same problem when I tried to fix one of my stuck fader. I tried to lubricate the rails using spray which was a HUGH mistake.
At the end of the fader motor is a little disk with lots of tiny breakouts. This disk is used to measure the fader position. I think by using spray I messed up these tiny holes and the sensor. This is how a managed to get it fixed.
- Disassemble the fader like descriped above.
- spray the disk and the senors with compressed air
- test the fader
- if it still doesnt work whipe the disk very gently with a lint free or microfiber cloth. You might need to do this several time.
Hope this helps
Martin
Hi guys
I experienced also a fader malfunction. I opened it with the description and the string came lose; it was a big mess. I can proudly say that I fixed it with some patience!! But now the fader moves not so smooth anymore…
:( what to do?
Oh yeah, the string didn;t came lose: it was loose allready (that was the issue)
My solution was:
1) move the fader towards the end (away from the motor)
2) lock it with an elastic rope or something similar
3) do not wind the green string around the copper guide thingys at the end
4) do the rope in the silvercoloured thing which moves (check the knut)
5) lock the silver coloured thing which moves with a piece of a tie-rap
6) wind it up (this is the hardest part) 7 times. BEGIN not at the lowest point possible on the silver coloured thing which moves. Just one step higher please!
7) Last step is to put the green string on the copper coloured guide thingys
I forgot two quite important steps:
0) desolder the optical sensor first of all
solder it back on
Hey James,
Just wanted to say a big thanks for this article. Worked a treat.
Reference for anyone else who might encounter this particular problem:
Fader 5 was only making it half way up on calibration test. If you moved it up and down for a while and then turned the unit on it would pass calibration, but if you tried it again without this little ritual, it would again only make it about half way up.
In the end, it looks like the issue was possibly the rubber o-ring at the top of the slide bar. It was sticking to the fader guide and getting dropped off at random places along the slide. Then when the fader moved up again it was encountering a small amount of extra resistance from the o-ring, which I guess confused it into thinking it had hit the top of the guide. I blew air on, greased, and oiled everything in sight just to make sure there were no other resistance points, and made sure the o-ring was greased nice and good so it stayed stuck at the top of the slide instead of stuck to the fader.
It appears to have fixed my problem; fader 5 is so far working fine. It was such a stupid little issue, I thought I’d post it in case it solved any hitherto unexplainable fader problems.
Cheers.
Thanks for the info. I tore my MCU Pro apart because Faders 2 & 4 weren’t calibrating. Unless I can somehow rethread ea. fader I’m screwed. Damn thread broke off. Oh well. $50 +/- for ea. new fader ain’t so bad considering this was a demo unit from Guitar Center. The 10% I saved on the demo model covers the cost of two faders. At least everything else works.
I have an MCU Pro Extender. Some of you mention approx $50 cost for faders. Where did you find them so I can order some? Thanks.
Nice site. Great info. As a current update on price – I just ordered a replacement fader (I have the tangled / broken string issue). Current cost is $40 but they aren’t shipping until June!!!
That’s great news! Thanks so much for the update & for commenting. I’ll add that to the top of the article.
Thanks for this post. I own 1 MCU pro and 5 extender pros (48 faders + 1 master fader) I talked to mackie at the NAMM show about the fader problems they were having with these units. They told me that they had a 2% failure rate with these units (and yes I mean 2% not .02%) which is ridiculous . This means that 1 out of every 5 units they ship out has a fade problem. So first off the MCU pro I got worked fine then I ordered the 5 extenders which 2 came within a month then 2 more in about 2-3 months then finally the last one came 3-4 months later. With the 5 extenders I got 3 of them had back faders (some units 1 bad, and some up to 4 bad faders). So I sent 3 of the units back and had to wait again to get the replacement 3 units which took another 2-3 months to receive. Come on… Mackie what is going on here. Now its been about 2 1/2 years since I have owned them all of the faders in the mcu pro, and 4 of the extenders work perfectly fine. The 5th extender is messed up (2 faders stop at around -20, and 2 other fader sometimes work and sometimes dont). So I called up Mackie, and they said the warranty is only 1 year, but I can buy the fader for $45. So They sent me to the parts dept, who told me there out of stock for 2-3 months on the fader……………. UHHHH. What a pain. This article looks very promising and as soon as Im done trying this I will start working on the extender. Ive looked all around for replacement upgraded fader (I used to own 2 yamaha 02R’s and some one, I think P&G made upgraded faders for this) as these mackie ones just plain out suck. Why doesnt mackie just make better fades?????? I spent about $3,500 on the entire mackie setup, and say if someone did make an upgraded fader it would be at least $100 per fader. Thats another $4,900, just to have reliable faders.
Anyways the only other option is the Euphonix MC-5 (a 48 fader version with the center control is $50,000+) so its not like I really have any other options. I use windows so the euphonix artist series is out of the questions. And from looking at the Tascam control units they really suck, and the SSL is also out of my price range.
Mackie needs to put better faders in the units, thats the bottom line. But from what Ive heard they got bought out by some Chinese company and everything will be made in chine now. So looks like we are in for a larger failure rate in faders when they restart production of the faders and the MCU units in June 2010.
4 Faders Fixed!!!
The extender works perfect now.
None of the ribbon cables were tangled, but there was a lot of residue on the inside of the metal fader housing. I used a light weight oil (air tool oil) and cleaned the inside of the housing with it and left a small amount of the metal so the ribbon would work smother when it hits the housing. The big thing I found was that the faders were hitting the sides of the fader paths on the top plate of the unit. This can easily be adjusted with the 2 hex screws on top of the unit on each fader.
Anyways thanks for the post I will be doing this every time a fader stops working.
Hey for anybody who has really messed up fader strings or if the string snapped, knotted etc…
I have mended countless fader strings, without soldering anything. took me around 12-14 hours to figure out but I finally got it and re-strung all of my messy faders….
Step 1 – Unscrew fader using James Stewart’s method…
Step 2 – Once you have the metal case off, see if the string simply needs to be re-fed onto the copper wheels… as this will save you some time and a little money.
Step 3 – Buy / get some nylon or strong thread… (roughly the thickness of the one that comes with it), some INSTANT super glue (try to get a very watery glue and NOT the thick kind), a very small screw driver or pointy device to feed the string around the fader parts, and last but not least some decent lighting around you…
Step 3 – Take the stock string off, tie one end of the new string to the bottom of the fader (the bit that wont stick through the surface)… feed the new string over the first copper wheel (start at the fader and you’re going to work your way up and then around).
Step 4 – Feed the new string from the 1st copper wheel, around the back of the metal coil (the thing that spins), feed it around the coil starting from just below the middle of the coil, keep feeding it back around for three to four spins, then bring the new string out from the coil, over the 2nd copper wheel, then down to the third, then the fourth.
Step 5 – Once the new string has been fed through the last copper wheel, tighten it as much as possible without snapping the new string. Then wrap the string back around the fader where you tied the other end. Tie this end to it now, but because it should be tight all the way around, it will take some patience to do this, once tied securely, get some of that super glue, add a couple drops to the fader bottom to secure the string to the fader, making the bond even stronger.
Step 6 – Sigh a huge sigh of relief… Carefully place the casing back on, and reattach the entire fader to the MCU, you should have a completely automated fader once again! Take care over it, as the thread isnt as strong as the original string, and can easily snap if too much tension is applied.
Hopefully this works for all of you, it was just my last resort before oredering a bunch of new faders from a European site.
What’s up Audio Peeps! Let me first thank James for this how-to-fix and all the info from the rest of you audio fanatics! Without this info I would of never found out that the main board in my MCU was DONE! Unfortunately Mackie no longer makes this part and I’ve searched the net and found nothing. So, I just want to know if anyone has an MCU (2nd gen, right before the “pro” model) that they wan to part out? I’m in need of the main board (the board that the fader channels are connected to). Thanks in advance!
Adrian