New Advance in the Research for Silencing Stompswitches !!! :-)

[drolo]

Some time ago I bought a bag of these to use as strap locks:



Obviously, i dont have 50 guitars to use all the 100 washers and once I abandoned my idea of a venture in ebay strap lock retailer (...)  I was left with all these laying around unused.

That was until I thought of this:



I have been trying to silence that noisy footpedal for a while now. Changed the switches to soft touch ones. Helped, but not that much. Stuffed the box with old torn T-Shirts. Helped, but not enough.

The metallic noise of the switches was still transfered and amplified by the resonating metal box.

Now that i have inserted the switches with a rubber washer below and above the metal case, isolating them from the case, they are (almost) perfectly silent, at least enough for not being heard in quiet recording sessions.

After doing that i decided to give my other stompboxes the same treatment:



Granted, it did not have the same effect on the latching 3PDT's, will not make them silent and certainly not eliminate any electronic pop   but it helped tame a bit of the "thonk" that sometimes woke up my little boy at night ;-)

A bag of these can be found for around 10 USD for 100 washers around the web. (or you can drink lots of that beer ...)

[Labaris]

Interesting, thanks!
What are these made of?

[drolo]

Hi,

They are made of rubber. Don't know exactly which kind of rubber.
The ones you find on "flip top" bottles like Grolsch beer

I guess just about any kind of rubber washers with the right diameter will do the same.

[reverberation66]

I guess I don't really understand what kind of noise issues you were having that would necessitate such a thing.  are you just talking about the mechanical noise of the switch clicking on and off? I don't know what kind of switching system those cheap danelectro pedals use but it seems like those are relatively silent.  Glad you solved the problem in an easy, inexpensive way though. 

[drolo]

I guess I don't really understand what kind of noise issues you were having that would necessitate such a thing.  are you just talking about the mechanical noise of the switch clicking on and off? I don't know what kind of switching system those cheap danelectro pedals use but it seems like those are relatively silent.  Glad you solved the problem in an easy, inexpensive way though. 

I am trying to reduce the mechanical noise indeed
maybe I should just replace all my pedals with danelectros and stop bothering with all this DIY stuff once and for all ...