multiple channel switching with looping and pedals

[pauldumbell]

Hey all
So after gigging my new rig with pedals Ive discovered that I am tap dancing to get my tones in order, while singing...its a gigantic distraction. It is important that I get my setup to a more manageable state. Ive played a rig with no pedals at all for almost 30 years, so this is quite a task, but must be done so i can peg the sound on our albums in the live setting.
I am using an egnator tweaker 88 which has a 2 switchable channels with additional switchable boost per channel. Also on the footswitch for the amp is an effects loop. What I am trying to figure out is to have certain pedals turn on when I for example hit the dirty boost channel on the amp. Or tremolo turns on when I hit the clean channel. I would need like 6 to 8 different combinations of the 4 amp settings with various effects. Anybody out there have some insight for me?
Cheers
Paul

[defaced]

Does your amp support MIDI switching?

[pauldumbell]

Hi Mike
I do not believe so.
It is switched over 2 stereo 1/4 inch jacks.
Paul

[pauldumbell]

I still have no clue, anyone care to enlighten me?

[defaced]

Ok, that eliminates the possibility of using a generic MIDI switcher. This means to achieve your goal you're going to need to know the details of how the amps channel switching is done. Some amps use a simple phone plug and switch the tip to ground. Others are much more complicated. What is your amp? I need to see a schematic to be of much help.

The problem here is switching both pedals and your amp at the same time. If the channel switching is done on your amp using some easy method, you can build one of RGs programmable FX bloopers and just treat each channel of the amp like an effect. If the amps channel switching is not simple, you might have to build an interface box between your looped and the amp, or hit two switches for each setting, one for your amp channel, the other on your looped.

[pauldumbell]

Thanks Mike
Its an egnater tweaker 88. I couldnt locate a schematic online, so I sent an email to egnater to request one. Ill post it when i get it.
cheers
Paul

[defaced]

No problem Paul.  Luckily with the name of the amp I was able to look up some pictures of it and it appears as if we can sort this pretty quickly and probably without a schematic.  The back of the amp has labels that call out what each part of the phone plug does.  If you pull the cable out of the amp and measure resistance between the tip and sleeve, then tip and ring while switching the pedal switches, you should see them just go open (no resistance) and closed (nearly zero resistance).  If not, we'll take voltage readings from the amp, but I'd rather avoid that unless necessary. 

If this is the case, then all you need is a Y cable with a stereo female jack which splits to two male phone plugs.  One with the ring of the female tied to the male sleeve, the other with the sleeve of the female tied to the sleeve of the male.  This will allow you to build RGs FX switcher, or buy any one of the commercial units out there to manage your amp and pedals at the same time.  

[pauldumbell]

Wow! Thanks, Just gave the geofex article a read. Its tricky. Ill never have that built in time for the tour I'm about to do (starts on the 16th of april).  If I had a decent electronic supply house here in Detroit..mayyyybe.

[defaced]

buy any one of the commercial units out there to manage your amp and pedals at the same time.  

I thought about this and you'd have to modify the wiring of the four relays you'd use for your amp to be separate from the bypass audio.  It'll still work, but you'd have to open it up and cut a few traces/jumper around some stuff.  Not a big deal, but worth noting.  

Most of us who do this buy from online retailers.  For something like this, you'll need to use one of the big houses like Mouser, Digikey, Allied, Newark, or Jameco for the logic chips, DIP switches, and relays, then pick up the momentary foot switches from a pedal specific place like smallbear electronics, mammoth electronics, pedal parts plus, etc.  The resistors and caps for this project you can get most anywhere.  For a chassis, check out Hammond Manufacturing or use some of the other DIY solutions out there like RG's recommendation of using steel building studs for a chassis.  For PCB material, veroboard.com sells very nice quality vero and perf in many different sizes, certainly large enough to get this whole project on a single board, as well as black copper clad board which you can use to do a etched layout.