Can the 56 BE any better?

It's hard to improve on perfection but even the 56 needs to be looked after. Sorry - but the 56 doesn't come with self cleaning faders or a small army of nanobots to look after your mixer while you sleep. So you need to spend a little quality time to keep your 56 in spick and span working order. It's not hard, but does involve a screwdriver, some lube and something to clean up the mess. Oh... that sounds a bit iffy. But it's not - so let's get started.

Maintenance

The 56 is on the whole a sturdy beast. It'll take as much punishment as you can dish out and not complain, but it will need some TLC from time to time and for daddy to tell it that everything will be OK.

Obviously the faders, while being built like a tank, do get dirty, especially if you attempt the pouring a can of Coke into a Rane to test the "it'll still work honest" theory. Nice theory - the fader might will work, but I'm not sure how happy the rest of the 56 will deal with a can of fizzy liquid being poured into it's innards. Anyway, let's pop that puppy out of its case and give it a wash.

Remove the assorted knobs from the top of the 56 and unscrew the faceplate to give you access to the faders. You'll notice that the faders are the same and can indeed be swapped around if you need to.



A special note before we start, the content on this page is valid for the 56 and 57. They share the same faders. So when I refer to the 56, it's simple for ease.

So here we have a 56 fader in not so great shape. I've not poured Coke into it, but perhaps 12 months of fluff, handruff and associated debris have made their way into the guts of the 56 and because of the lube on the rails, this chaff sticks to the fader, making it feel clogged and uneven - hence the reason for cleaning.

Now some of you impatient types will just want to pour a gallon of Castrol GTX in there and get back to cutting but that'll just make things worse. It is VITAL to clean the fader before applying any kind of lube at all. If you don't all that will happen is that the already sticky crap will get stickier and will clog up the fader even more.



Cleaning the faders is easy, but care must be taken. We're not talking clean room conditions here, you just need to be aware of the sensors at the ends of the faders and not to move them while cleaning. You can use any kind of cloth that doesn't leave more fluff than it takes off - so cotton wool is out of the question. I use regular kitchen paper towel without any kind of liquid cleaner.

Once all chaff and old lube has been removed, a little rail polishing is in order. Rane recommend using newspaper strips in a shoe shine polishing fashion to give the rails that extra polish that will allow the fader to run that much smoother.



Having cleaned everything up, it's time to make that fader run silky smooth. Time for a little bit of general fader cleaning advice - never EVER use WD40 as a lubricant. Use a dedicated lubricant such as Caig Cailube MCL or perhaps sewing machine oil as a good second choice. Basically, a silicon based lubricant is fine. Only a few drops on the rails is required - there is no need to swamp the rails. Now simply drop the faders back in and everything is like new, perhaps even better than new.

Modding

Now it's quite possible that in the process of cleaning the faders, that you've accidentally moved the sensors that control the magnetic action of the fader. It doesn't take much to do it and can typically be identified as an increased lag or if moved the wrong way (and more likely) apparent bleeding.



Inside the brown fader body is a magnet, the proximity of which to the small sensors at the end of the fader dictates the lag. This sensor is attached to the circuit board and like any other electronic component, isn't happy being manhandled - snap it off and you're in for a new fader so be ultra careful when moving it.

If you find that your fader is bleeding, you need to move the sensor towards the fader body (the brown thing that houses the magnet remember?). It doesn't take much, perhaps 0.5mm at the most. To do this, Rane recommend the end of a paperclip but I use watchmakers screwdrivers. As well as fixing the bleed, this technique can also be used to fine tune the lag to your own style. However, the finer you try to have the lag, the chances are you'll introduce bleed so again, be careful when doing this.

Spring Mod

There's one last adjustment that can be made to the Rane fader and that's tension adjust. You'll notice the copper spring at one end of the fader body - the friction between this spring and the rail causes the tension. If you want and even smoother fader motion, you can adjust the position of this spring so that it sits above the rail.



This is complete safe, non-destructive and doesn't require the use of pliers to pull or cut the spring off. All you do is push the long stem of the spring to one side so it clears the rail and let it sit above the rail. That's it - simple as that. The difference is quite apparent - if you were to hold a 56 fader with the spring in place and shake it from side to side, it would be very difficult to move. With this spring mod, it's free moving.