I live in a studio apartment with a nice little music recording setup in one corner. Unfortunately I had a mishap in the kitchen, a small grease fire on the stove. No humans or pets were harmed, and there was no property damage (other than the skillet and a couple of nice Italian sausages), but because the apartment is all one big room, some of my gear including Digitakt, Digitone, and Analog Four got an oily film on them from the grease vapor that floated around the room. I cleaned them with a soft cloth lightly dampened with a very diluted solution of warm water with a couple of drops of Dawn dishwashing soap. This was partially effective, but I can still see greasy smudges on them, which is making me sad every time I use them. I’m very hesitant to use any stronger cleaning agent, or anything but the lightest moisture, but I’m wondering if anyone has any tips for how to thoroughly get this gunk off of them. Also, more generally, how do you clean between closely spaced knobs/buttons on your music gear? I’ve got big fat fingers, so it’s difficult to get a cloth all up in there.
Not sure about those pieces of gear specifically but alcohol will take off some kinds of screen printing ink along with the grime. I’ve accidentally unlabeled stuff trying to clean it with alcohol.
Simple Green or other d-limonine based cleaners are amazing for grease and oil. As usual, try a little bit first to make sure it doesn’t harm the paint. But it is basically concentrated citrus and is food safe.
Also: dilute! SG comes in various concentrations, for light grease you should dilute at least 50:50 with water.
Never use alcohol to clean dirt and stuff - Alcohol is mostly for cleaning things you don’t mind having extra things strip off along with it, or to clean the internal pcb… etc.
I’ve stripped many things using alcohol since that’s my go-to and I always forget… but I don’t recommend using alcohol to clean dirt off.
The best solution is warm water along with a mild soap.
that’s fair, the alcohol will degrade the screen print. Didn’t consider that, so alcohol might not be great on a device like something from Elektron. The 99% iso popped into my head because I use a ton of it cleaning my modular panels and electrical contacts, etc.
Thanks for the tips. I was leery of alcohol or any kind of solvents because in another thread somebody mentioned that they inadvertently stripped the labels off a Model:Samples using alcohol. I may (cautiously) try the Simple Green, or just give it another go with the dish soap and water with a little bit more soap this time. The q-tip idea is a good one for getting into small spaces, I’ve got a giant box of 'em. Thanks again.
Yeah it’s great for electrical contacts, and lots of other stuff too. Unfortunately it’s also great for getting most types of ink off of almost anything.
If you know what substance you’re trying to remove from what material you can usually look up solvent tables for each and see if you can find something that is a solvent for one and not the other. It’s complicated slightly here by there being three things but the same method can be applied.
Grease fires are the worst. I remember in 2003 I had a grease fire, Lost all my records ( about 2200 pieces of vinyl) They were unusable and irreplaceable. But I also lost my trusty Technics 1200mk2’s. Which I only recently replaced last year for a small fortune. The soot leftover from the fire was really bad.
For general maintenance and cleaning, I use a ‘microfibre cloth’, I know its tough getting in there amongst the knobs and buttons. Personally, I wouldn’t use any harsh chemicals.
Sorry for the fire, loved your description! Could you pop off the knobs and faceplates of the affected gear, soak them in warm soapy water and gently wash them with a microfibre cloth before placing them back on?