Is your pedalboard distracting you with all those flashing lights?

[Mark Hammer]

I was just looking at a guy's Youtube, showcasing his pedalboard. And it seemed like every modulation or delay pedal on hs board had a bright flashing LED. The panaorama of flashing LEDs was chaotic. My first thought was "Holy crap, how does a person NOT get disoriented by all of that asynchronous flashing? How on earth can they concentrate?".

Not to suggest that status LEDs and rate indicator LEDs are not a good thing, but often they tend to be brighter than they need to be. Sometimes, that's because the chassis is a light colour, and you need a brighter light to be visible against a light background. But sometimes, it's because nobody thought hard enough about the user.

LEDs have gotten a lot more efficient in recent years; easily 10x more efficient, if not more in many cases. The 1k-2.2k current limiting resistor in an 80's Boss pedal may have yielded enough current to make those old-school 300mcd red LEDs visible on stage, but for a contemporary 10,000mcd blue LED, an 18k-22k current-limiting resistor will still give a pretty bright status indicator.

So here's an idea: if you have a pedal with the usual flashing LED, and a stompswitch for turning it on and off, set the LED to dim when in bypass. I did this for a tremolo I made myself. The rate indicator IS the status indicator. One LED that I can always see flashing, but when in bypss the same LED is set to dim; both so that it consumes less battery current, and so that it doesn't distract.  If you want to get fancy, RGB LEDs are cheap enough these days that you can use the stompswitch to select between one colour for engage, and another for bypass, making the bypass colour flash more dimly.

[Philippe]

*hmm...* perhaps don't look down? personally, I've never been fond of ultra-bright/flashing LEDs...they're best reserved for roadway bridges & britney spears pseudo-concerts. besides, if one is seriously playing most of us can/could tell if a certain effect is on (or off). those door-sized pedalboards & bling-inspired LEDs are best reserved for the showy or vision/hearing impaired.

[deadastronaut]

i test my led brightness in light and dark ...its surprising how much resistance you have to put on super brights

to get them to be non retina destructive....but i still love em..

tip, sand them to diffuse too...

[karbomusic]

I built a neat level meter to go on my pedal board (as a builder) just so I could easily check the output level of any pedal in the chain or the guitar itself. I hooked it up at rehearsal.... driving home from rehearsal three hours later... I realized I never even watched it the entire time other than a check when I first plugged it in. So, apparently I'm completely oblivious to them when playing unless I'm specifically looking for one's status.

[vigilante397]

I felt a little embarrassed when I saw this thread because I posted a video a year or so ago right after I discovered RGB color-changing LEDs and put them in EVERY SINGLE PEDAL ON MY BOARD. My pedal board looked like a casino, which I thought was awesomely distracting. Fortunately I didn't post the video to youtube, it was just on facebook, so it couldn't have been me

[R.G.]

Well, as I point out at shows where we have our 10-LED volume pedal, the more flashing lights the better. Chicks dig it.

[garcho]

I like to use a clear knob and clear shaft pot so I don't have to drill a separate hole for the LED. More lights the better IMO but not too bright, I hate that.

[Blitz Krieg]

that's how you know you got your money's worth.  where was that tube with the LED under it to make it glow?

[vigilante397]

where was that tube with the LED under it to make it glow?

I also like those. All the ones I've made lightly have been using blue LEDs

[aron]

More lights/knobs/sliders the better!

[deadastronaut]

+1000

[amptramp]

You could always have a photoresistor in series with the LED so that in bright ambients, you may get 10 mA and in dark ambients you may get 3 mA.  The photoresistor may require a resistor in parallel to avoid going down to a current that is too small and a resistor in series to limit the maximum current.

[mth5044]

I recall someone somewhere saying you can put a dot from a sharpee on the top of the LED to make it less blinding.

[blackieNYC]

Recently tried the sandpaper technique on bright LEDs.  Wow!  A Revelation. (It's like a little light went on...)
Gotta sandpaper down the sides too.  I noticed the spots I missed - I'd like to try scratching it with a pin in neat lines. Maybe it will look faceted. 

[GGBB]

I'd like to try scratching it with a pin in neat lines. Maybe it will look faceted. 

Oooohh. If you do that please post pics! 

[Mark Hammer]

You could always have a photoresistor in series with the LED so that in bright ambients, you may get 10 mA and in dark ambients you may get 3 mA.  The photoresistor may require a resistor in parallel to avoid going down to a current that is too small and a resistor in series to limit the maximum current.

Very clever!

Recently tried the sandpaper technique on bright LEDs.  Wow!  A Revelation. (It's like a little light went on...)
Gotta sandpaper down the sides too.  I noticed the spots I missed - I'd like to try scratching it with a pin in neat lines. Maybe it will look faceted. 

I posted the same question on another forum, and someone suggested simply putting a strip of translucent masking tape over the LED.  Although, I have some misgivings about needing to regularly replace the tape to avoid decompopsing adhesive on the pedal surface.

[karbomusic]

Recently tried the sandpaper technique on bright LEDs.  Wow!  A Revelation. (It's like a little light went on...)

If you muck around and rub them enough post sanding they sort of want to "come back" some. Still works for the most part. I tend to just twist one back and fort in a circular motion into some 0000 steel wool which doesn't leave the unevenness that sandpaper does.

[MrStab]

set the LED to dim when in bypass

I made a circuit like this myself recently - it was basically one high-value resistor (22k or so) always connected to ground, with a lower-value one switched in as though for a regular status LED, so they're in parallel.

Doubt it's much help to anyone, but i wanted to cheap out and use the same ground connection to activate a PNP, and a simple 1n4148 diode in series with the lower-value resistor prevented the current from going the wrong way. works quite well, but i've only built one thus far.

Before i knew better (still don't know much), i fixed a ticking Boss TR-2 for someone, caused by some kind of LFO-out mod. with a big hole to fill, i decided to put a melanoma-causing blue LED in there, to flash along with the rate. In hindsight, it was ridiculous. I have no regrets - i don't get on with the guy. Maybe that's why. lol

[deadastronaut]

^ led terrorism..