Any way to repair controller potentiometers?

[8bitAndy]

The up/down pot of my controller goes from about 16 ohms to 381 K ohms. This is way below spec according to the manual and causes it to not have the full range.

Is there a way to clean or refurbish these pots, or are replacements available?

How can they be removed from the controller?

[bohoki]

i would suggest putting in missile command and see if you can center the cursor pull off the actuators then place them back on at the 9:00 and 6:00 positions the 5200 self calibrates and is pretty forgiving just doing a few circles and power cycles

[8bitAndy]

Thanks, I managed to get the pot out. It was lightly glued into the plastic surrounding it, lightly rocking it broke it free. The pot is pretty simple inside, there is nothing that can be done to increase it's resistance at the high end.

I turned the POKEY pot all the way up and made the joystick playable in Missile Command and Gyruss.

 

I'd still like to find good replacement pots. Please reply here or PM me if you know of a source.

[IanWon]

http://best-electronics-ca.com/

[ToddUGA]

I spent a good year back in the early 2000s trying to source a replacement potentiometer that was also spring return to center, which would take care of the non-centering issue as well as serve as a replacement for worn out factory pots. After talking with every manufacturer I could find I never did find what I was looking for. With China now able to manufacture pretty much anything under the sun I wonder if maybe a spring return to center replacement pot might now be a possibility.

[Danjovic]

And how about using a potentiometer with less resistance and add a capacitor to compensate. For instance, the @bohoki adapter adds 220nf for the 100k ohms potentiometer of PC joysticks. Same for the 100k digipots from @smbaker circuit.