Long lasting / high quality momentary foot switch?

[Fancy Lime]

Hi Paul,

well, now that you said... Your absolutely right, that is by far the better solution. I feel a wee bit stupid that that never even remotely occurred to me. Well, I guess sometimes one is locked in with ones own ideas and needs a fresh pair of eves to spot the obvious flaws. Thanks! With your idea the whole thing becomes a lot less daring and complicated. I might get around to doing it after all.

Cheers,
Andy

[Fuzz-O-Rama]

If thought you wanted an integrated switch. What is being broached is what Behringer is using in their wah pedal. There is a tapered triangular cutout between LED and phototransistor. This is used to replace a pot so it cannot wear out. It is etremely affordable for modification. As a musician I would find a treadle a little overkill. I really hope this helps.

[Fancy Lime]

Yeah, sorry, we drifted off topic a bit. The point of this thread was indeed a switch (problems solved on that one), the pedal thing is something else. Thanks for the Behringer tip, I didn't know they made an optical wah. Gutting one of those is probably one of the less hassle options for the manual tremolo project and if the hardware is not total crap it's probably cheaper that buying the hardware separately. Goes a bit against my urge to build from scratch, though... But sometime even with me reason prevails.

Andy

[Fuzz-O-Rama]

Don't ever be afraid to go a little off topic. I though we were here to spitball, put our heads together, help each other. I have seen other forums where well intentioned people are chastised for not knowing every thread in the site's history. A lot of thoughts that a person has can and do and lead to problem solving and inovation. Those that can do, those that can't criticize. It is a pleasure for me to hear everyone's thoughts about this fun and musically important subject.

[Fancy Lime]

Don't ever be afraid to go a little off topic. I though we were here to spitball, put our heads together, help each other. I have seen other forums where well intentioned people are chastised for not knowing every thread in the site's history. A lot of thoughts that a person has can and do and lead to problem solving and inovation. Those that can do, those that can't criticize. It is a pleasure for me to hear everyone's thoughts about this fun and musically important subject.

You mean to tell me I read and memorized all 1080589 posts for nothing? But joking aside, I and I guess others too have asked a lot of questions that had been answered several times over. But even with thorough use of the search function it can be quite impossible to find anything specific unless it contains unique words. It is one of my favorite things on this particular forum that I have very rarely seen people throwing around the standard "use the search function, dumbass" answer. They will let you know if something has been discussed but not in an obnoxious, berating way.

There we are, way off topic again  Ahm... Switches rule! Final answer.

Cheers,
Andy

[ElectricDruid]

If thought you wanted an integrated switch. What is being broached is what Behringer is using in their wah pedal. There is a tapered triangular cutout between LED and phototransistor. This is used to replace a pot so it cannot wear out. It is etremely affordable for modification. As a musician I would find a treadle a little overkill. I really hope this helps.

I had an old Yamaha electric organ from the early 1970's that used the same system for the swell pedal. It used a little light bulb (yeah, really - no LEDs much back then) and an LDR, and the treadle had the cutout stuck to the bottom of the pedal. It worked well and was immune to scratchiness, which is good when it must have been waggled a million times in it's life.

T.

<sorry, have we called time on this thread?!><go on, landlord, just a couple before we go...>

[anotherjim]

Optical lamp/LDR standard fair until the '80s. My old Logan string synth had one. There was a lack of standardisation, lamp voltage & connectors, but that meant that the pedal was supplied with the instrument. Many had a celluloid shutter strip, which degrades over time & not helped by the heat of a filament lamp.
I notice that Korg have a new stage keyboard. Branded as a VOX Continental, it comes with a pedal & I wonder if that's optical with something other than a TRS jack?
Behringer MIDI foot controllers are optical.