How can I fix my amps footswitch.

[Washington Irving]

I own a Carlsbro Rebel amp which has two footswitches: one to change the channel from clean to O/D and the other to turn reverb on or off. The reverb on my amp has two buttons which turn it on for the two channels seperately. My three year old brother used to go into the music room and repeatedly pull the jacks of these footswitches out and then plug them back in again. They were made of plastic and the amp was already second hand so, as you can imagine, these soon broke. I have therefore not been able to use the clean channel on my amp and have had to turn the O/D down and the volume up to get a semi-clean sound. I want to fix one of the footswitches so that I can use the clean channel and from what I understand I need a new stereo jack plug (which I am about to order from Maplin). There are three different wires in the cable coming from the footswitch, does anyone know how these should be connected up to the jack plug?

[d95err]

I think you're getting "jack" and "plug" mixed up. The jack is the part in the amp. The plug is at the end of the cable. Presumably your brother pulled the plug out of the jack.

This leaves me confused about a few things:

• What is broken? The plug or the jack? Are several different things broken?
  
• Is there really two separate footswitches each with it's own jack? Or, is it a single footswitch stereo jack, with a stereo plug going to a single foot pedal with two switches?

[Washington Irving]

Ah, I see, in that case I am getting jack and plug mixed up. I thought that the jack lead was the type of cable i.e. jack socket is the socket and jack plug was the plug on the end. Thanks for clarifying that. In answer to your quiries.

• The plug has actually come off the cable and the plug is not usable (I want to get a more durable metal one anyway)
• Yes there are two seperate footswitches but the one used for switching the reverb on and off is not needed. I think that they both have stereo plugs (that's what the guy at a music shop I took it into said)

[d95err]

Ok. That's good news. The plug should be easy to fix.

If the plug is stereo it has three connections: tip, ring (middle) and sleeve. If it's mono, there's just two: tip and sleeve.

Do this:
* Open up the plug to see how everything is connected
* Get a new plug
* Cut off the old plug from the cable a few inches away from the plug
* Solder the new plug on

[Washington Irving]

Unfortunately the plug came right off and is now lost. Is there any other way of findoing out how I should wire this thing.

[343 Salty Beans]

trial and error? 

If the wires coming off the plugless end of the cable (the part that broke off) are color-coded, you can open up your footswitch. You should be able to see the wires in there, and from there you can tell which goes to ground (sleeve), at least. Then connect the other two wires to the tip and ring, and you'll have a 50/50 chance. If it doesn't work, wire it the other way around and try again. I'd recommend using alligator clips for testing it so you don't have to do tedious soldering/unsoldering.

[d95err]

Like the poster before said - experiment. There are very few combinations possible, even if it really is a stereo plug. If it is mono, it probably doesn't even matter which cable goes where. If it's stereo, you'll have to try all combinations until you see the amp switch.

[Bagge]

 As stated before, you could open the footswitch box, and check out which wires run to the reverb switch and which run to Channel switch. Normally these switches shortens either tip/ground or ring/ground. So open the box and you should be able to identify where the wires go. But I believe tip is for channel and ring is for reverb.

[Ge_Whiz]

In the UK, 'jack' is the type of connector and can refer either to the plug or the socket. In fact, we usually use it to refer to the plug.

The switching circuits will probably work at low voltages (but be careful), so plug a stereo plug with the cover off in the control socket, and carefully short out each of the three contacts in pairs with a piece of wire or croc clip lead and observe the effect.