My radio tentacles have been playing up lately. It’s standard that musical instruments need maintenance and it’s no different for my tentacle instruments. This particular instrument has been incredibly robust and hasn’t had any issues with thread breakages, which is the most common thing to need maintenance. This is the first instrument that I have hot glued at point where the conductive thread is sewn to the wire, while it means I can’t access the connections if I need to fix them, it has worked so well I have not needed to fix them in almost 2 years! The only maintenance I have done is to paint the fabric after all the shininess wore off. I believe this was my downfall.
The current issue that I have had with it is that it plays sound when it’s not being touched. This shouldn’t happen as the circuit is not being completed without touch and therefore could not make sound. After checking there were no direct connections happening on the circuit, I used my multimeter to check the resistance between the two sides of the tentacle. There was some connection being made with about 1 M ohm of resistance. I believe that by painting my tentacles a few months ago, I created a surface that collected sweat and grime from the people playing the tentacles and this stayed on the fabric, creating a permanent connection. This is an idea that perhaps could be used to effect in a long term instrument that changed as it got older, but for now I have replaced the tentacles.
I washed one of the tentacles and since washing there is no connection between the two sides.
My main things to take away from this are:
- Certain shiny fabrics should probably be avoided as the shininess rubs off and looks bad, leading to replacements being required before the electronics wear out
- Avoid using paint between connections.
- Wipe down tentacles in between use.