Long lasting / high quality momentary foot switch?

[Fancy Lime]

Hey everyone,

I have several projects on my mind that require momentary foot switches for switching between different sounds. The basic idea is to change the sound with a tapping foot to add another rhythmic element to the playing. A foot switch for such a purpose would of course be used many many many times and need to be exceptionally long lasting. Does anyone have experience with those and can recommend a good way of doing this or warn me of a bad one? I have so far considered momentary switches by Apem and Toowei. Another possibility (although a bit more complicated) would be to use a foot actuator with a momentary pcb mount switch that probably would not last forever but would be cheap and easy to replace.

Thanks for any input,
Andy

[Mark Hammer]

RG should be along any minute now.....

[R.G.]

I ... refuse ... to be so callously used.

So there.   

[R.G.]

OK, rant off.   

F.L., you need to spend some time searching the forum. This and many other such questions have been asked many times here and in other places. In this particular case, you want to use a tactile switch with multi-million operations life specified, and rig up some kind of footswitch mechanism to make it mechanically robust.

The company I work for noted several years to a decade ago that replacing standard stomp switches on our pedals was over half of our repair work. We decided to use long-life tactile switches and never looked back. The current switches use a bushing that looks like a standard switch bushing, but actually just holds the tac switch up to meet the spring loaded plunger. The mechanism is set up just so to give it a chance to let the switch live a long and prosperous life. We went to electronic switching to actrually route the signals around, and that has worked very well, over many thousands of pedals and going on ten years. Our repair guy says he hardly ever replaces a bad footswitch. The foot-hardy 2pdt and 3pdt switches normally used are a poor compromise. They do make them in momentary, but - well, you need to try them and see if you can make them work in your application, I guess.

[smallbearelec]

This actuator:

http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/switch-actuator-for-b-o-b/

is the kind of component that R. G. is talking about. You can choose from a wide variety of momentary tactile switches that will work easily with it. If you prefer a stompable momentary switch:

http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/momentary-spst-no-soft-touch/

That one has become a go-to for modding Line 6 gear and is also popular with some pedal-makers.

[marcelomd]

I'm experimenting with arcade buttons. Sanwa, Semitsu and Happ are the usual suspects.

[Mark Hammer]

My guess is that arthritis would likely set in before the normal life-expectancy of most contemporary momentary switches would have been reached.

In which case, the real task is not to find a momentary that can last long-enough, but rather a housing and "target" that lets one's ankle last long enough.  That is, can some particular angle of the housing, and perhaps retro-fit cap over the stompswitch, provide a target that supports easy and comfortable tapping.

And, since feet get tired and footwear is not always compatible, may I suggest a "backup system" involving an instrument-mounted momentary soft-touch?  As I found by experimenting with a guitar-mounted photocell as a replacement for an expression pedal, sometimes your fingers can do things that your feet can't.  Indeed, a big part of why so may tap-tempo pedals have divisors and multiplicands is precisely because people can't move their feet with as much speed and precision as their fingers.

[Fancy Lime]

Hey guys,

thanks! My searches in the forum unfortunately returned such a jungle of related posts that I did not find what I was looking for. But I think I have a better idea now. I can get a Omron B3W-4050 sealed push button and a foot actuator that I think should be compatible (the one smallbearelec suggested) from my local shop. I'll just try to hook those up in the way R.G. suggested. Not quite sure how to do that yet but that should become clear once I have the parts in hand, I hope.

The remaining question is: Is that actually more reliable than an integrated momentary switch like this one: http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/momentary-spst-no-soft-touch/ ? And if so, why? For most of the switch models (pcb mount or enclosure mount) that I found in online shops I could not find data sheets and thus no minimum operation life times. For the Omron I found 1-3 million depending on force, which is probably not bad. Industrial switches (which would be impractically large and expensive) are more in the 30 million ball park.

I get that a momentary switch is inherently less fatigue prone than a latching switch because the mechanics are much simpler. But there seems to be a general preference among large manufacturers for the actuator-tactile switch combination over the integrated form. From a theoretical point of view it is not obvious to me why that would be. So I guess my real question is: is this preference real or my imagination and if it is real, does it have reasons that matter to me as a diy hobbyist or does it have purely practical reasons that only matter if you build thousands of units (like mass producibility / machanisation or slightly cheaper parts).

@ Mark
Ergonomics: For my feet the main issue here is the hight of the box on which the switch is mounted. I was actually thinking about putting the momentary switch in an extra box and connect it to the effect via cable. This way the switch box can be as flat as the switch allows (like an altoids tin or something). Also: the input on the effect could then also be hooked up to an external LFO, a trigger on the bass drum, a click track or any other on-off signal. I had even thought about making my own switch in form of a cable to step on. Two naked wires in a guitar cable housing with rubber strips every few cm to normally keep the wires apart. Or something. Needs more thought and lots of trial and error. I also toyed with the idea of an electronic switch triggered by a photocell but dismissed it due to the dependence on lighting conditions. That one could be built very flat.

As for the instrument mounted switch: For tap-tempos I totally agree. That is much more precise by hand. But what I have in mind is using the tapping of the foot to add an independent rhythmic element by altering the sound whilst playing. So my hands would be busy playing, leaving only the feet. Or a mic-stand mounted camera with blink-recognition to trigger a switch. Does anyone know the patent number for this one? 

Cheers,
Andy

[lars-musik]

Hi,

not long ago I was contacted by a Lehle sales guy who wanted (wrongly) thought I was in the pedal business. They obviously are going to make their switches available to the public and he sent a datasheet along and it looked really good.

Maybe you should contact him (I only got his facebook address): https://www.facebook.com/jokischaller

Here's a link to the datasheet he sent me via messenger. No idea if you can open it without a facebook account.

[Fuzz-O-Rama]

Cherry MX series. Gold contacts. Available in many actuation forces. For example Super Black are relatively stiff (150cN). There are also short throw and ones with a tactile bump or click. They used to make push-push ones for Caps Lock use. This was before you were born. The main thing is the gold contacts and extreme long life. As stated above, a mechanical metal stop makes any switch "foot proof". An extreme example of this is how a wah switch is mounted. Any flip-flop circuit(s) will work, just remember to add a de-bounce circuit. That being said, I will take a shuttered photo diode any day for NASA reliability.

[blackieNYC]

I think this is a question of numbers. Sw a and sw b.
Sw a fails once out of 100 after say 5,000 activations.
Sw b fails 3 times in the same conditions. How much are these switches worth? - price, usability, hole size, depth, cosmetic appeal, etc. Are you a hobbyist? Or doing a production run of 20? 2,800?
You're not a noob here, but I'll just say this so I can read it back to myself and think how insightful and clever I am. (Until the next comment comes in, perhaps.)
That little adaptor you use to plug DVI into a VGA monitor. Yours is fine, mine is fine, but at work we bought 100 and we rely on them professionally. And they turn out to suck, but that isn't going to affect the performance of yours or mine.
I haven't lost my network connection at home in months, but at work, lots and bandwidth and drops, reliability is an issue.  Should I follow suit and choose the provider that seems to have less outages at work? nah.
Gotta appreciate your effort and desire to contribute - this is how Stuff gets better, and if you find something substantially better (because there is always"better"), some folks will....  switch.
But the momentary from small bear will not let you down.

[Mark Hammer]

RE: the seeming preference for actuators.

I think one of the limitations of all-in-one switches is that they are often not designed to provide a pure piston action and the sort of target that facilitates that.  Ideally the actuator should plunge in a perfectly vertical manner, rather than a few degrees off vertical, as can easily happen with a conventional stompswitch, and the angle it forces your foot to be at.  Actuators can be designed on their own to yield a more perfect down-press each and every time.  The traditional Boss treadle provides a good example of an actuator formed out of the enclosure itself. 

RG can tell you about the "mushroom cap" actuators that Truetone used to use, before deferring to customer demand for someting that looked more like a stompswitch.  Customers: a royal pain in the arse but you can't sell stuff without 'em.

[R.G.]

We actually interviewed all the momentary footswitches we could find, and had issues with all of them. We wound up having a switch manufacturer make up a bushing with some sheet metal attached to it that would contain and fold over a snippet of PCB, which in turn holds the tactile switch. Both the mechanical properties and the location of the switch relative to the plunger spring are contained in the same place, smaller than some footswithes. Goes in the same hole as a standard footswitch - because it is the same bushing - and looks like the standard rounded-cylinder foot button because it is the same plunger. What's different is the sheet metal swaged onto the bottom and the tricky bits of what spring, how long, what the spring constant and throw distance is, to press the tactile switch without the mechanical pressures wearing out the tac switch all by itself.

IIRC we had to buy some number of thousands to get the custom deal done - I dislike the pricing and quantity side of the business and the boss handles all of that, so I don't know how many of them we started with. Switch manufacturing being the kind of business it is, once the initial tooling is paid for, each succeeding switch is very cheap. There was some talk of offering the switches by themselves to others, but I don't think that decision has ever been made. The circuit board snippets are made in full panels of PCB, about 1500 at a time as I recall - it's been some years. The price, performance, and reliability have worked for us in our business situation. This may or may not be a good thing for someone else, as the startup quantities are big, and you have to have a commitment to use up the initial thousands you paid for, so you generally have to commit to a strategy of using electronic swithching - which we have. The devil is always in the details.

[Fancy Lime]

Hi everyone,

sorry for not replying, have been offline for a while.

@ lars-musik
The Lehle switch looks like a good compromise between longevity and ease of installation for my purpose, thanks for the tip. I'll see if I can find out when and where that will be for sale, as far as I can tell it does not yet seem to be.

@ Fuzz-O-Rama
Huh, had not thought about misusing high performance (gaming) keyboard keys for this purpose, excellent idea! I'll have to do some digging for data sheets and the like but judging by the quality obsession of some gamers I know I think there might be a chance that there are keys to be found that exceed any reasonable minimum specs for my intended purpose.

@ blackieNYC
Well, now that you put it that way... No, I don't need a super-reliable, forever-lasting switch. I am a hobbyist, what I build are (so far) all one-offs and I rarely build for friends (in return for material costs only). I'm in this for the fun of developing prototypes, figuring out how stuff works (I have no formal EE training beyond the Three Laws of Electrical Engineering ) and tinkering with circuits to make them do what I want. So for all practical intents and purposes, any crappy momentary switch would be fine for what I am doing (at this point in time). But I am a bit of a stickler for detail and like to do things right. Or at least know how they should be done right. Especially because I like to pass on whatever I learn during my tinkering and I feel its important to teach "good form". One can always decide to not bother and use the "good enough" option but to decide when that is appropriate one needs to know what the "best" option would be. That's why I try to always go with the best option even when it's not necessary, to learn how it's done. Oh, and I use a Parker Jotter pen because it has the "right" actuation force and quality feel to it. That may actually tell you more about my motives that any of the above.

@ Mark
I actually tried to find hinged enclosures but could not find any to my and my wallets liking. Rixen enclosures are kind of costly and I find them a bit clunky looking. I've always loved the look of the Ibanez/Maxon pedals from the TS9 era, if any one knows where to get blanks of those... A bit small for large projects with many knobs, though.  On the other hand, a Polish(?) company named Exar used to have enclosures that look suspiciously like they took a Hammon-style enclosure and DIYed themselves a hinged switch from a strip of rubber. Hm, if done right, that may be a good and flexible solution for an actuator. Would be lower profile than a traditional stomp switch. I'm thinking car floor mat and a suitable spring. Needs more thought.

@ R.G.
So, you guys are using a C-shaped (or [-shaped) sheet metal bracket to hold the pcb-mounted switch under the actuator, did I get that right? Sounds easy enough to try out for DIY purposes. Probably won't be very pretty to look at but my builds are in no danger of winning any internal beauty contests anyway, so thats all right.

Thanks,
Andy

[Fuzz-O-Rama]

I don't want to beat a dead horse but I will anyway. Combine this http://www.smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/switch-actuator-for-b-o-b/ with this PCB mount photo optical switch [url][http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/9111.pdf/url]. Replace spring with opaque tab (cut-to-suit) and you have a sexy looking, high reliability solution.

[Fuzz-O-Rama]

Sorry...
Please paste this in your search engine if you are having difficulties.

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/9111.pdf/

OPB610 and OPB620

[anotherjim]

If you want fast stuttering switching, I'm not at all sure if a footswitch is the best ergonomically. I've been thinking about this. I think I could perform better with a rocker pedal where the switching is at some angle of sweep that you'd soon learn to keep crossing. So an expression pedal CV to a window comparator might be worth investigating?

[Fancy Lime]

Funny you should bring up rocker pedals and optical switches. I had thought about using a combination of the two for a "manual tremolo" type of thing. My idea was to make the pedal move a strip with holes in it up and down between a diode and a photoresistor. I didn't know the two came packaged like in the OPB611, so thanks for the tip. By having different strips with different numbers and sizes of holes, that would make a very versatile stutter control without the need for complicated controllers (not that those are bad but I think the hardcore analog approach has a certain charm). By rocking the pedal to the beat and having a strip with 2, one with 3, one with 4 one with 5... holes at regular distances, one could have a range of rhythmically interesting and musically relevant tremolo speeds. A strip with very many holes should make for a strange effect like a much too fast tremolo (similar to an aliaser) and one with randomly placed holes would surly sound interesting if combined with the right controlled substances (and maybe a fuzz up front and a delay behind the tremolo).

I've never gotten around to building this partly because I have not thought of a "strip changer" concept that I was happy with. I would prefer a rotary control to manually taking out and replacing pieces and I came up with something that would do that but that would mean custom machining parts and I don't have the tools for that right now. The other reason for not pursuing this was that I'm a bass player and this thing would probably be much better suited for guitar. If anyone wants to run with the concept, I'd be glad to contribute ideas if I can. I'd really like to see this getting built but it may take me quite some time to do it myself. Or has anyone done that already and I'm just clueless. Always nice to think up a never-seen-before uniquely innovative concept only to learn later that Lenoardo da Vinci scribbled it on the back of a napkin in 1492 and Hendrix used it at Woodstock.

Cheers,
Andy

[anotherjim]

I was thinking of using a normal expression pedal.
Foot tapping needs two moves, down & up for one action. So if the pedal CV is 0v to 9v (or whatever), the triggered circuit is looking for a CV between (say) 3v and 6v. Waggling the pedal up & down will mean a trigger on-off occurs both ways, halving the effort or doubling the speed for the same effort. Plus easier to work standing up.

[PRR]

> a "strip changer" concept

Electronic parts are cheaper than mechanical parts.

One strip with 10 different hole-rows. 10 photo transistors. A 10-way switch to select which transistor (hole-row) you want.

10 phototransistors is probably cheaper than the levers arms and nuts to change mechanically.