digital pedals "latching up"...a real head scratcher.

[csmatt45]

Hello,

I've had this question for a while. I only have one digital pedal in my chain, it will sometimes "freeze" up, meaning the LED is on, but only a weak signal can pass it. It seems very random, and will often be fine for an hour of rehearsal then freeze. the problem is fixed by giving the pedal, or a neighboring pedal in the chain a jiggle.

One might mistake it for a bad chord, but I have tried all the obvious things:
1) different delay pedal (boss, digidelay)
2) bad cord
3) giving the delay it's own power supply (a boss 300ma adapter/wart).

the only thing that solves it is to take the digital pedal out of the chain. I even went as far as borrowing a friend's analog delay...no problems there.

A real head scratcher. I've tried various searchs within the forum and on google. Couldn't find anything. Then I talked to a friend, and he said it had happed to him as well.

Aside from just not using the digital pedal, would a voodoo labs-type isolated supply solve the problem (like some of the schematics around here and general guit gadgets), or would that be the same as running the pedal on it's own wall-wart (which i've already tried).

At this point, i don't care about the pedal, I just want to know the problem because it's making me nuts!

I'm sure many of you can relate...

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

best,

Matt

[Processaurus]

Hi, I've had my digital pedals (boss PS-5 and EH holier grail) bomb almost without fail if the adaptor is plugged into the pedal before the adaptor gets plugged into the outlet, or its AC gets turned on.

Does your pedal bomb when you're using battery power? not that you'd want to, but it might give a clue where the problem is.

[Mark Hammer]

During the beta-testing of some o the LIne 6 Tone Core pedals, one of the beta-testers reported a sort of latch-up that occurred with a certain configuration of control settings.  The rest of us were asked to try ours out in that manner.  I didn't experience it, but the point is that digital pedals CAN latch up and give something like the "blue screen of death" on rare occasions.  Whether that is entirely a software issue or some sort of interaction between software and prevailing conditions (signal, settings, power), I can't say since I am continents away from being any sort of expert in such matters.  That's certainly no reason to shun such pedals, though.

What I *would* do if I were you is contact tech support for that manufacturer and report it.  It may well be something they can provide a useful solution for.  Alternatively, much like pharmaceutical companies rely on doctors' reports of bad drug reactions to revise and improve drugs, the manufacturer is relying on the acumulatiopn of a certain number of field reports about their pedals to be able to detect any software/firmware issues that can be easily revised with an upgrade in the next production run.  Hell, they may even send you a new pedal if the info is useful to them!

[R.G.]

the problem is fixed by giving the pedal, or a neighboring pedal in the chain a jiggle.

That means that there is a mechanical something that is intermittent inside. Things that can be fixed by a mechanical motion are always an intermittent contact somewhere. That contact could be a cable connector that's not quite seated, a board grounding screw that's not tight, a crack in a circuit board that opens, or a component that's not ... quite... soldered on one or more pins.

Latchups that impacts don't fix are the kind of Blue Screen Of Death that Mark was referring to. The processing power - and complexity -  in a DSP pedal is more than was available in the mainframe computers of the 1960's. Getting all that debugged and working perfectly under all possible situations is a huge task.

Digital pedals are computers. How many ways does YOUR computer latch up?

[Mark Hammer]

Which is precisely the basis of my recommendation that he contact the tech support folks at the manufacturer.  They can't put their products through every conceivable test condition prior to release, and rely on customer feedback to get ALL the bugs worked out. 

It'd be nice if it was possible to just download a patch like you can for games and OS's, wouldn't it?

[nelson]

Which is precisely the basis of my recommendation that he contact the tech support folks at the manufacturer.  They can't put their products through every conceivable test condition prior to release, and rely on customer feedback to get ALL the bugs worked out. 

It'd be nice if it was possible to just download a patch like you can for games and OS's, wouldn't it?

would be nice to buy a "blank" pedal and download the algorithm for any effect you wish onto it via USB cable. Could make the blank pedal VERY cheap and charge for the algorithms.

[R.G.]

Right, Mark! I was doing an amplified "yeah!" to your note.

On the "download an algorithm" thing:

I am getting ever more resistant to the way that content is sold today. If you ever let the effects makers figure out how to download an algorithm that makes your Universal Fx Platform do a whiz bang effect, they will also figure out how to (a) lock it to one guitar and one amp and either (b) make it expire or (c) make it prone to viruses and trojan horses so you have to keep coming back to them for updates.  It makes for one more way to build a binary parasite.

I wonder how long it took Microsoft to figure out that having security holes in their operating system was a great idea - it forced a dependence on users to keep coming back to them regularly and they were demonstrably absent of malice in a legal sense because other people not traceable to them did the dirty work.  If I were Microsoft and had their obvious attitudes, I'd figure out how to charge a nickel for each security update. Oops, I guess I shouldn't have said that.

[Mark Hammer]

Your comments about the risks accompanying "downoad an algorithm", along with whatever benefits there may be, are an excellent insight.

I won't profess to be on top of all of it, but the Line 6 approach, that started with the Modeller series, and is now more clearly realized in the Tone Core series, shows the emergence of a plug-in-an-algorithm approach to digital FX.  As has been noted on the forum before, the little magic black button at the back of the chassis permits the module to be popped out, presumably for replacement in the event of damage.  Though I'm not entirely sure if the modules cross the mono/stereo line (only some of the Tone Cores have stereo ins and outs), they are effectively "universal", meaning that if you had an Uber-Metal and a Crystal Chorus, you could take the modules out of each, swap them, and you would have done what you've seen done in so many cheesy sci-fi movies before: taken the minds of two bodies and swapped them.

Of course, this is a firmware swap, and not a downloadable algorithm.  The modules are hardware, and while you could swap them with friends who also own a shell/station or two from the product line, they aren't intended to be copyable or interchangeable with any other product line.  Unlike the downloadable scenario you describe, once you buy the pedal, the commitment to Line 6 effectively ends in terms of any additional outlay.  Furthermore, they have no impact on whatever else you might use - a phone plug patch cord is a phone plug patch cord, right?

I do not speak for them at all, but my sense is that such swapping was not their intent, nor did they have any plans to sell modules for $20 once you buy the shell.  The major goal was to have a basic shell that would simplify product development and allow a pedal series to be produced that could be added to or changed without much retooling of the basic package.  After all, the only difference between pedals is the little black plastic sealed plug-in module that has a small aluminum faceplate and controls/LED.  This is far easier and cheaper to produce than coming up with a new Boss/DOD type pedal, which might require painting, machining and legending of a set of chassis that could not be used for anything else, and which still requires that jacks, battery and pots be connected to THAT board in THAT way.  If product/pedal X doesn't sell in quite the number of units anticipated, what do you do with the leftovers?  In Line 6's case, any shell/station not used for pedal X can be reallocated to pedal Y.  I.E., they never lose money on the shells, only on the plug-in modules that might not sell well, and these are essentially the cheapest part of the pedal to produce (I'm quite certain plenty of $ were pumped into developing andtesting the code that sits inside them).

On the other hand, the format allows the sort of modularity players have dreamed about for ages, and which was attempted several different times in the analog domain by Korg, SCI, Vesta, and others.  Perhaps *BECAUSE* they were in the analog domain, the module had to consist of a costlier package, which made every module that muich more of a gamble to the manufacturer.  You can't offer up a proprietary modular system without having a full range of effect types but are people going to like YOUR compressor or phaser enough to want to buy it?  Line 6's approach here requires no overall system or buss as the other modular formats did.  In theory, you could have a pedalboard wih a bunch of mixed pedals (theirs and other companies) in a fixed order, and just pop the module and stick in the one that strikes your fancy.  If the modules are less of a financial gamble to produce, in principle there is all the more reason to explore fanciful possibilities.  For instance, if its only a matter of some code and a tiny plug-in module, why NOT have a frequency-shifter module?  Why NOT have a wacko phase shifter that does barberpole, phasefilter, multi-modulation, etc, in addition to 4-stager and Univibe?  Why NOT have a whole bunch of things that don't have to try quite so hard to be everything to everybody because they don't cost much to make and peiopole don't mind spending $20-40 or whatever on them?

Why NOT have a means for digital effects to enter the realm of "pedals for all" the way that Danelectro has managed in the analog realm?