THEY DUNNIT!!! All your dreams come true...

[puretube]

no more bending over...

http://www.musictoyz.com/guitar/pedals/tip.php

           

[casey]

man, what a great idea......

[puretube]

the idea,
& the original
was made by "ELECTRO-HARMONIX",
some 30 years ago...

(I know some guys will get wet eyes when looking at that article...   )

[Mark Hammer]

And the Hot Foot is reborn!  Very nice.  We had numerous discussions of this here and at Ampage the last few years, but folks were always at a loss to obtain usable materials and a suitable mechanism.

The Hot Foot was a terrific E-H product that came and went all too quickly.  I was happy to have had one when they were available.  The chief problem with them was that the flexible shaft was so heavy duty that the pedal you wanted to control would need to be either secured in place or else very heavy to avoid flipping over.  As well, the mechanism for securing the shaft to the pot was a thumbscrew which made it impossible to use on pedals with close pot spacing.  That wasn't a problem for use with a Memory Man or any of the 1-knobbers (Small Stone, Phase 90, Dr Q, etc,), but it also meant you simply couldn't use an E-H Hot Foot with your Boss pedals which lost a huge market segment.

This unit seem to have both those problems licked with the use of a thinner gauge cable, and what are likely Allen screws.  Nice work.  Much success to the person/s behind it.

What can you use them for?  Ever wanted to sustain a note on a Big Muff and work the tone control back and forth to get a floating bumblebee" tone?  Ever wished you could gradually make your Phase 90 LFO speed up and slow down for a more reaslistic Leslie simulation?  Do you have a hankering for the Digitech Whammy but can't find or afford one?  Then this may be your ticket.

[casey]

the idea,
& the original
was made by "ELECTRO-HARMONIX",
some 30 years ago...

(I know some guys will get wet eyes when looking at that article...   )

im too young to remember this...i was born in 74....  great idea
rehashed!  most pedals on that website are modified:
tubescreamers
fuzz faces
distortion +
muff pi

not many original designs anymore....

[YouAre]

well c'mon its pretty cheap. 100 bucks aint too bad. considering the price alot of expression pedals today.  but for guys like us, all it involves is an expression pedal and stereo jack right?[/i]

[ExpAnonColin]

My problem are those that Mark mentioned... I think it may still be to small to get the BOSSes, and they might have gone too far with the cable so that if you're trying to turn a harder to turn pot (like in a small stone, small clone) the cable could build up tension by twisting itself instead of turning the pot.  It has some flaws but it's certainly not easy to DIY the mechanics of it.  With all of the flaws, you'd think putting a jack inside of a pedal and make a simple EXP pedal for $30 would be a better option... especially if you use smaller-than-1/8" stereo jacks.

-Colin

[Paul Marossy]

What a cool idea! I haven't seen these before.

[puretube]

so it`s the smallness of the B*ss pedals, that is more problematic,
than the largeness of E-H pedals (which often is argued against...).
Latter can be solved by moving to bigger stages... ( :lol: ).

[PB Wilson]

So it basically works like the old-style bicycle spedometers/odometers? A flexible shaft in a metal jacket that physically turns the knob? Really cool application. It doesn't surprise me that E-H came up with the idea. They constantly amaze me with their crazy ideas that actually work.

I wonder how hard it would be to DIY? Does anyone have a source for a relatively thin gauge flexible shaft section? Hooking it up to the pot in a wah shouldn't be too difficult.

[Tim Escobedo]

Not a bad price at all. What I want to know is: where can I get treadles like that?

[petemoore]

My buddy's got two of the old kind.
 Looks like something that would go with a drum set...

[mikeb]

It doesn't say what the rotation range is ...... wasn't the original's way less than 270 degrees?

Mike

[Gilles C]

Every time I see that kind of box, I can't help but think that a stepping motor controlled by a PIC would be easier to install.

Someday, someone's gonna make one...

The last motor I saw that would do the job was at around $25.00 CAN, so it wouldn't be so costly to build. And it would be possible to find a cheaper one.

[petemoore]

Mikeb Wrote
 It doesn't say what the rotation range is ...... wasn't the original's way less than 270 degrees?
 ..having a variable ratio pedal sweep to amout of pot turn would be a desirable feature, often times fine tune is what I'd want, of course you could vary the pot tapers.

[Marcus Dahl]

It seems a little big for what it does? Doesn't it?

[Somicide]

heh, I always just nudged the knobs with my feet... and I have big feet... I dunno, i never bent down lest it wise damn important...  Peace n Love,

Jeff

[Mark Hammer]

Is it big for what it does?  I don't think so.  Actually, it's smaller than the old Hot Foot, which was one big bad boy, let me tell you (although it was priced about the same, when I bought mine, if I remember).

The original was essentially a passive volume pedal, with a slightly longer shaft for the pot (i.e., it extended out a bit more beyond the connecting gear than a typical wah or volume pedal pot might).  The controller end of the flexible shaft attached to the shaft of the pot in the controller, which meant that the shaft came out a hole in the *side* of the Hot Foot.  In this particular new product, the shaft extends out the top.  I'm not sure what the mechanical coupling arrangement is.

One thing for sure is that with most pedals sporting a top-mounted control arrangement, having the flexible cable come out the top and connect to a top-mounted pot nearby via a gentle arc should SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the chance of flippage in smaller pedals.  My old Hot Foot was coupled to a pedal with *side*-mounted pots (a Univox compressor), and the only way I could keep it from flipping over under the stress was to simply keep it a distance away from the Hot Foot to straighten out the shaft.  Fortunately, I was only using 4 small pedals in those days (Univox Compressor, MXR 6-band EQ / Envelope Filter / Noise Gate), without any formal pedal-board arrangement, so spatial arrangement was not a huge problem.

Since the original simply packed a flexible extension onto the shaft of a standard volume pedal pot, the shaft turned as much as the pot would, minus a few degrees due to imperfect torque (it IS a flexible shaft, not a solid bar).  I used to use mine to control the output level pot on my compressor, and had no difficulty using it to do silence-to-overdrive volume swells, so I can't imagine the rotation as being significantly less than 270 degrees.

Is a PIC-controlled stepping motor a likely improvement?  It would depend.  For precision purposes, probably.  But the advantage of this sort of system is that you have the feel of a wah, even while controlling something very different than a wah.  That direct tonal/tactile feedback is very important.  Remember, the idea here is not simply ease-of-adjustment, but a performance control.  I guess the most straightforward comparison is like the difference between a pitch-control pot somewhere on the front panel that stays where you leave it, and a spring-loaded, thumb-controlled bender on a synth.  One is "merely" an adjustment, and the other encourages you to integrate pitch stability into your playing.

Much like the way in which a wah is used to produce emphasis, this sort of pedal can be used with other pedals to produce emphasis in other ways.  Ones that quickly come to mind are control of regeneration in flangers, phasers, and especially delays.  Being able to alter the mid-band boost/cut while you're playing also permits one to use a single distortion pedal to create related but still contrasting "voices".  Ever wanted to nail the interlocking solos on "The End" from Abbey Road?  This, a fuzz with sweepable midrange, and a wee bit of pickup switching, might be just the ticket.

I've harped on and on about using something like Anderton's "pluck follower" to control parameters in conjunction with how fast you're playing (not how strong you're picking).  Okay, imagine having some sort of attack-delay/envelope shaping unit like a Slow Gear, or PAiA Gator, and being able to adjust the attack time of your notes as you speed up or slow down your playing.

And, of course, there is the tried and true of bending pitch by quickly altering delay time on an analog delay for "Whammy Pedal" like effects.

This thing may look dull as dishwater on the outside, but you'd be surprised with what it can do for your playing and imagination.

[PB Wilson]

Hooking that thing up to an UglyFace could yield some pretty awesome science fiction soundtrack tones! I gotta get working on mine. :twisted:

[The Tone God]

Anybody got a schematic or is that off limits ? Just curious if I can build a clone for $30 like all the other pedals in the world.

Andrew