Well, i soldered it in and it
works like a charm !I don't see the point of going through the soldering removal of the pcb and all, unless you really really REALLY want to keep it bonestock as if it came from the factory. Mine was butchered so i had no other option but evenso i would do it this way again if i did have the factory style pcb and all.
Since these encoders should have a long lifespan i would advise to solder it straight on the wiring harness.
It's so much quicker and easier and requires no special tools like a soldering sucking device.
Anybody with even a little soldering experience can do this and i would even recommend it to beginners as it just requires 4 wires to be soldered.
This really is the difference of having it done and pay dearly for it in some shops or doing it yourself and be done within the hour (including opening and closing up your 4K).
You can cut away pin 3 and 4 on the encoder if that makes it easier for you (extra room for soldering) if the soldering tip is not narrow. That way you can solder each pin on the outside of each encoder pin which would work with even the biggest soldering tip and not have the chance of soldering 2 pins at once.
Just for the record, those pins (#3 and #4) are redundant, they serve no purpose whatsoever.
Here is the tested and tried soldering method schematic:
As you can see you just solder the 4 wires of the wiring harness (remove the connector end), splice the wires, and strip the ends) onto the encoder pins.
Just lose the whole pcb board and stick the encoder through the black (4 direction button) encasing, screw on the nut from the top and it sits firmly.
You can add some doublesided tape to the top of the encoder if you like and make sure it doesn't have a change of spinning while operating the encoderwheel, but the nut and the supplied friction ring will keep that mother sitting tight for many years.
Red/white is the 5V, Yellow/white is the 0V (ground), the White wire (It's 2 colored but mainly White color) wire is for signals , and the Blue/white one is the other signal wire.
It's that simple.
NOTE: as for counting, note the 6 and 1 on the encoder decal next to the COPAL name. They show the actual pin numbers, you start counting at rightside (pin 1) and count your way up to the leftside to pin 6.
There is no need for an adaptor unless somebody prefers a plug and play solution that does not involve soldering.
I reckon that the demand would be too low to make that worthwhile.
If you don't want to solder this yourself i am sure that any radio shop could do this for you within 10 minutes and should cost no more than $10 realisticly, it's just that simple.