Pedalboard contact repair begins

Yesterday I got notification that my pedal MIDI encoder shipped airmail from Europe. Last night I started the repair work on the damaged contacts. Turns out the wires are copper. I was able to desolder and remove them without a problem (and of course desoldered some of their neighbors by accident as well!). The holes in the rail are for anchoring the individual wires leaving the cable which passes along the edge of the rail.

Looks they were held down by (presumably) hide glue. I don't really want to mess with that, so I plan to reglue them with a thin layer of wood glue. Flame me in the comments if you think this is a really bad idea :)


A few of them appear to have swelling damage from the water, which is inhibiting the wires from passing cleanly through the little slits. This is a problem; I have not yet though about how to deal with it. Worst case I suppose I would replace those notes with reed switches. 


Next: regluing and soldering up the diodes