Reviving my Dunlop Cry Baby 535Q guitar pedal

My Problem

Yesterday I opened my pedalboard for the first time in like maybe 8 years or so.

I’m not playing much these days, but it was really cool to relive some of the memories and sounds from my youth again. Cleaned up and fixed some of the pedals and cables, but the main adventure was to replace the pot in my more than 10 years old Dunlop Cry Baby 535Q Wah.

Having stomped on it I immediately noticed that it's being kinda crackly and noisy.

I remembered that I actually bought a replacement years ago but hesitated to do it due to my lacking soldering skills, but now I was ready 🙌🏻

My Fix

I removed the back cover to access the pcb(s). Turns out there is no need to remove the screws and nuts holding the main board because the pot I was about to replace is soldered to a separate small pcb. Therefore I carefully removed that small board, put it into my Hakko Omnivise for convenience and easily removed an old pot using low-melt solder.

Then cleaned up the solder joints with a wick and soldered a fresh replacement pot.

My Advice

As iFixit guys used to say - add more flux! Seriously, that helps.

Also I used leaded solder for this job instead of the unleaded used by Dunlop at manufacturing.

They obviously used unleaded for ecological reasons, but since potentiometers are consumables and this new pot may be replaced in the future as well - I used leaded solder with lower melting temperature than the unleaded for easier and faster repair if need be.