Cobalt Flux Repair Help (redirect to other forum if needed)

After everying cleaning and refixing of the stripped holes with wood glue that I do for my Flux every month, I left the panels exposed just to let the glue dry for the night so I could then wipe it down again and have it ready for play. When I got home from school, I was seriously about to throw something. My mom's little devil/rat/dog/creature decided to sneak in there and chew both the up and left arrows' exposed wires and snapped both of them. (the up arrow's is missing over an inch of wire wth) I know this was that overgrown rodent's fault because there was drool on the pad, which I don't believe a human would be leaving around.

The left panel's wire that connects from the velcro to the control box was fixed, but the up arrow is practically dead. I'll be playing for my daily endless mode and the up arrow will become unresponsive around 40 songs, which then I would find myself twisting the wires back together for the nth time.

Since copper is a good conductor, would I be able to buy some from the store, or even just find some around the house, and solder it to connect both ends of the up arrow's wire? (the green-insulated one)

Yes that will work, make sure you use electrical tape because you don't want the exposed wire to contact other panels or the ground plate. And you don't need to look for copper wire, anything will do. Cobalt Flux is using sheet metal, many wires use aluminum, just find a small wire somewhere (telephone wire?) strip the wires, don't be afraid to mess up you'll have some bad cuts, bad strips, just keep at it until you get a decent piece of insulated wire with both ends exposed, tie them together (don't bother soldering just twist) and tape the ends.

You can even remove the velcro piece under you up arrow, pull the wire out and put a new piece in so that you'll only have to make one connection.

Basically go to town, be careful not to damage other wires but for the up arrow take it apart and re-connect it. The more you mess with it the more work you'll have to perform but the better you'll become at fixing your pads. The design is very basic.

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Thank you for the help. I'll get right on it.

hellrazor's right on the money, Ibut if you find your pad stops responding or gets more misses than usual, it might be an idea to take off the velcro on the other panels too, strip the wires a bit more, then stick the velcro back down. Apparently because they do not strip the wires properly sometimes, it can cause the contact to be a bit shaky at times.

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Okay, now this pad is just irritating ever since those wires were snapped. Today, I failed Under The Sky. HOW DO YOU FAIL UNDER THE SKY? Before this started to happen, I would PFC the Expert chart 95% of the time I would play it and then go on to getting SDGs on Konoko expert next. I failed Under The Sky because the freezes would not hold and I constantly received almosts, goods, misses, and boos from my Up, Right, and Down arrows. I can possibly understand the top and right because they were the ones that had their wires snapped by our retarded dog, but why is the Down arrow now doing this to me? I thought at first that it could be because the holes were stripped, which I had used toothpicks and wood glue to fix for ages. That couldn't be it, so then I tried to fix this problem with added wire, which I did not have soldering tools so I had togo with duct tape and tightly twisting wires together. This worked for a few days, but when I opened the wire to check if they came apart, they were still the same. Hell, I AAAd Frozen Ray and Colors oni during the period, so I couldn't understand why it became that bad after. I tried to clean the pads again and do the routine wood glue + toothpicks, but I thought maybe the toothpicks were too high and possibly messing with conductivity, so I removed all of them, vacuumed the excess wood shavings, and then wood glued the holes only and made sure they were filled and not "hollow" over a period of a few days. The panels are back to their usual recessed height, but I have no clue why this is happening now. Could it be the control box? I've had this pad for 2.5 years now and I'm seriously confused on why it is now choosing to do this conveniently after two panels had their wires snapped, which still does not explain the third. The controll box has always been in good shape and only the top plug of it is slightly lose, but still securely plugged into the box. Lastly, I'm wondering if it could be the lexan panels that are worn to the point that two have broken off a corner and most of their holes have worn down to larger holes, but this had not hindered my scores before save for gameplay and screws coming out. That never directly influenced gameplay and has been like that for about a year now.

I need help with this pad now because I have hit an end and have no clue what I need to do to fix it.

I'll supply pictures later.

Okay, two nights ago, my panels worked perfectly after two weeks of hell, in which they didn't work for crap, and I even managed to AAA Seduction (vocal remix) on Expert. Today, I got 25 boos, 4 almosts, and 1 good on Himwari and failed. (I also had 332 perfects and 8 greats)

I'm really wondering now if it is the control box or arrows.

If there's nothing visibly wrong with the pad, are you able to either - test the control box on another platform - or test the pad using a couple of wires in the Dsub socket and a volt meter. If you can find a pinout diagram for the CF them that should make that easy. Otherwise, it'll be a process of elimination.

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I received some money today for my birthday and was wondering if I should buy a new control box for my Cobalt Flux to see if it fixes these issues while also buying some replacement panels because the ones I have have been worn out.

What is your take on this, ZIV?

Were you able to test it?
If you aren't sure it's busted then it mightn't be worth bothering with yet.

If you really want one one though then go for it I guess.

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Okay, so the button arrow and the top left diagonal arrow have both completely stopped functioning and checking the pad wires does not change the fact, which is really odd because I haven't touched the pad in a few weeks and it played perfectly fine then. Would my only guess be the control box then?