I decided to go ahead and replace the faulty resonance slider on my Realistic MG-1 (aka “The Radio Shack Moog”). It’s been nonfunctional for a while now, and I’ve had the replacement parts for about a year, but now that I’ve got a reasonable soldering station, I figured it was time to fix the worst of the MG-1’s problems (it’s also got issues with the polyphony and the oscillator modulation sliders, but they can wait a little while longer).
The operation went pretty smoothly – the hardest part was actually getting the front panel lined back up with the case (the switches make it kind of tricky – the key is to center all the switches before lining them up – even the two-position ones).
Once I got everything back together, I fired it up, turned up the resonance, and started turning down the cutoff and ZOMG SELF-OSCILLATION! I think it’s even more responsive than it was before the slider failed. I’m very glad to have done this! Plus, now that I’ve repaired it, it’s fair game for the recording I’m working on.