tl;dr = rub alcohol on it with a cloth 🍸
There are certain portable audio recorders, headphones, and other equipment have a special kind of external plastic that “feels rubbery” to the touch. The advantage was that it made the gear easier to grip when you held it, reducing the likelihood that you would accidentally drop it. It was made out of plastic, but it felt like it was made out of hard rubber. Awesome, right?
The problem is that some of this rubbery plastic didn’t age well. After a while instead of being grippy, it became sticky. There’s a scientific term for this called “rubber reversion.” I think it happens when certain environmental conditions are a factor, but I’m not sure. I just know that some of my equipment became sticky, and that it was super gross.
How to make sticky plastic not sticky
I found a few different methods for removing this stickiness, and I tried a couple of them. One person YouTube recommended rubbing Armor All on your gear with a flannel cloth. I bought a little bottle and tried it out, but it was too time consuming. The guy in the video recommended rubbing it for “a couple of hours.” No thanks. I’ll squirt the Armor All on my dashboard next time I wash my car, though.
The faster way to do it is to use rubbing alcohol. I used 70% Isopropyl Alcohol on my sticky gear and it worked fine. Just apply some to a cloth and rub it on the equipment. Be careful not to get liquid inside of your gear. Be mindful of openings around buttons and such. This is why you need to use the cloth.
Also be aware that the alcohol may remove the print on your equipment. This can be bad, especially if you won’t be able to tell the difference between a Power button and a Record button. You should test this out on a non-important area of the equipment first. If the alcohol removes the print and/or paint, you should pursue another solution.
There are some popular pieces of equipment suffer from this reversion problem. The Zoom H5 and Zoom H4n Pro audio recorders are two notable models that can get sticky. I’ve owned the Zoom H4n Pro for several years, and my unit is fine. But, I know it happened to other people. This did happen to my Edirol R-09-HR audio recorder, and thankfully I’ve been able to remedy it.
