"Turning off" a delay

[sfr]

I'm building a PT-80, and one thing that's a minor annoyance to me with previous delay builds (a couple of Rebotes of various incarnations) is when you're playing with longer delay times and/or more repeats, (and particularly with infinite repeats and feedback and what have you) is how the delay continues going inside the pedal as where when you're bypassed.  So sometimes if you're playing with delay, you bypass it, and you turn it back on, and you've still got the echoes from the whatever you were playing a second ago still going.  (Also, if you get the thing feedbacking, you can occasionally here the delay signal even when bypassed, at least on one of my Rebotes)

So it occured to me I could use the extra set of lugs on a 3PDT (using the Mill. bypass for the status indicator) to ground the wiper of the repeats pot, effectively cutting off the repeats when in bypass mode. 

I'll give it a try when I get the thing finished, but can anyone think of a reason this wouldn't work well, or a more sensible way to do this?

[petemoore]

  I thought that'd do it too, now I think you've answered it.
  ..A great way to use for that 'extra' lug on a 3PDT wired for TB and LED indicator,  the switched ground that goes to the unused lug/LED [depending which mode the switch is in.
 

[Mark Hammer]

Me, I'd ground the 1uf cap immediately after the expander, such that ANY delay signal was killed, whether "fresh" or recirculated.

Alternatively, a person might want to, for whatever reason, retain the recirculated signal or re-use, in which case maybe something like a momentary grounding switch in addition to a total/global bypass switch might be useful.  When I started to think of it, it also occurred to me that one might be able to generate some interesting sounds by having a momentary switch that yu could tap and insert brief periods of "silence-stutter" into a wet signal.

[sfr]

Good point, Mark.  My mention of the wiper was based on what I do to kill things when I have run-away oscillation; that is, I turn the knob down.  (I end up playing with the oscillation/infinite feedback delay and pedal noises quite a bit at the crescendo-ing end of some of our longer songs - which reminds me, anyone recommend a volume pedal you can work easily with your knee?)

Looking at the schematic again, (something I should do before I open my mouth) that looks like a better solution.   I need to pick up some voltage regulators and a couple of caps and hopefully I'll have the build thrown together this week, and see what comes out of it; I'm hoping to do the "momentary delay feed" like I did on a Rebote a while back.  Hopefully after the help I received in that thread, I can work my way around cap popping with more ease - I suspect I'll have the same things to work around here. 

I like your ideas with the extra toggle as well, although I don't think I could warrant making it a footswitch.  Just too much realestate on an effect that's going to be taking up two "panels" on my FX enclosure all ready.  I'm tired of accidently hitting footswitches and reaching around to tap them from weird angles and have forced myself to work with a particularly layout for footswitches and such on these pedals in the multi-unit, making sure I focus on a having a unit based on being performance-friendly more than seeing how much stuff I can cram on the front panel.   So anytime I add an extra footswitch, I add three inches.

But this gets me thinking about the possibility of throwing a d-sub or similar connector on these pedals somewhere to *allow* me the ability to do all the "million knob" tweaks and extra footswitch and expression pedal control with external units when I'm in the studio or whatever, without messing up the core unit's tailoring to useability.  Run footswitches in parallel to extra toggles.  For things where you're breaking a connection to add stuff in, you could make a "key" out of another d-sub connector with pins shorted or whatever, that you connect into the back of the pedal when you aren't adding the external unit.  (Could also makes your gear useless to anyone who steals it w/p the "key"!)   I've got enough room under my board, perhaps this could all just be mounted on a bracket inside the unit, and then I could take off the side panel and run the cable out that way. 

Wow, basically anytime I listen to you guys, I come up with more stupid ideas.  I'm basically never going to be done with building these darn pedals.  I just want to play!  I need a 12-step program.