Friday, December 31, 2010

Cleaning the Creative SBS15 volume control



I had these cute little speakers for my Desktop for years, exactly for the last ten years. These sounds pretty good for its size and is pretty clear over the volume range. Off late, the volume control started behaving odd due to the carbon build up on the potentiometer. I wanted to open the speaker and clean the pot, but could not find any screws at the back. I even thought that the front and back speaker faces are glued together and tried to break it with a screwdriver from the bottom. Suddenly it struck me that there could be some screws on the front, and it was true. Opened the front grill and found four screws. Opened it and voila, cleaned the pot in 5 mins with Iso propyl alchohol and a syringe. The speakers are back to its sweet sound!


Disconnect the speakers. Use a pointed screwdriver to open the grill slowly.


Remove all the four screws

Find the potentiometer (the brown circular thing)

Use a syringe to pour isopropyl alcohol to the small opening at the side. Rotate the volume control a few times to clear the pot.