not liking miniswitches on stompboxes

[jonathan perez]

Do you really feel a need to impose your sensibilities? Does it bother you THAT much? Sheesh.

"diy symmetry nightmares."

wow.

There's the anti-welcome-wagon full barrels blazing without even _seeing_ anything.

calm down, gun powder. no need to drop yer draws, he meant no harm to begin with. if you dont want an opinion, dont post yours in a PUBLIC FORUM.

carry on.  

[Johan]

I bet 90% of those switches stay in the same position from day two on..yes, they are fun the first day, but after that, they are never touched again and could be replaced with a jumper inside..at least for those of us who never even bother to plug in at home, but only play through amps/effects at rehearsals and on stage
same goes with a lot of the regular controls...using a dod250 to boost you marshall?...kneel down before the gig to see that the vol is at "6" and the gain at "3"...could be replaced with trimmers..
using a CE2?  ..checking to see booth knobs are at "straight up"...don't really need them...how about the old DD3..how often do you radically change the setting?...mine is usually around 500ms and gone by the forth repeat..only time I touch the knobs is when they are not where I like them to be...obviously, people want the knobs, but how often do you REALY need them?
but back to microswitches...they break too easy and are of little use in a real world, giging environment...I'd much rather have internal jumpers if I must have that option

johan

[ADR]

I had functionality in mind (i.e. not putting delicate switches beside an area you place your feet), not just trying to be some pedal fashion guru.

Perhaps I was rash when expressing my thoughts off hand. I didn't think it would provoke any of this.

My apologies.

just expressing my opinion

Putting delicate switches in harms way is just... dumb.

as you did

[bluesdevil]

Well Pete, I knew somebody would have to finally bring up the ol' "Frankenstein Switch" gimmick for this thread. 

[petemoore]

  Yea, I did some slide switches, they were open type, scavenged, middlin' to funky to failing.
 

[petemoore]

  I go for the plain dist, then DIST because of pre-boost, and like Fat Dist sometimes so the input cap select on my DIST+ is a used item, not live, but it's nice having it there when I want to push it right up next to an edge, one that I really have to be able to hear to stay near and not over, playing style playback-feedback etc. like I get into when recording..record/tweek/ listen, adjust, playback, repeat..lol. 
  starts getting into high stakes gambling when part failure is taken into consideration:
  I have 24 jacks, 18 phono plugs, 10 x 3PDT, 1 good + 1 dodgy toggle before my amp, after my guitar.
  Real good for figureing out my effects order and 'multi effect tweeking', about time I started getting into alternative switching and another all in one enclosure with 3 jacks [I/O/PS].

[Skreddy]

I think, Joe; you hit the nail on the head with your "cabinet handles" remark in the first post.  Quite simple to implement and does not prevent you from getting to anything--just keeps army boots off the delicates.  Of course they make cabinet/drawer handles in rollbar designs that are chrome, stainless, black, or paintable.

[sfr]

Rack mount, and electronic switching.  Nothing but on/off switches on the floor.   Moves your gear up to waist level, meaning it's easier to tweak things on the fly, for those of us that find ourselves changing knobs every song.  (Or multiple times during a song, or while you're playing distorted and legato with one hand and the amp blowing out one of your eardrums and the other hand tweaking things for crazy noises.) 

I used to play thrashy punk - I've been hit with every possible thing imaginable, and a lot our shows involved us being in the middle of the dance floor, so people where running all over my gear, my guitar and me.   I used to gig with a boost, a tuner, and a volume pedal, with the jacks all duck-taped in in an effort to keep people (again, mostly the singer) from knocking cables out.  I put the volume pedal underneath the tripod of one of the cymbal stands, where it actually was safest.  Unfortunetly, I had to be on the watchout for flying sticks, because when I was pulling back the volume for the quiet part was usually when the drummer was tossing his sticks out for ones that weren't shards. 

Rackmount also means you're less likely to be hit in the face with a spinning SM57 while you reach down to change something.  (Ouch.) 

I've repaired numerous DOD pedals for broken switch actuators.  I've got some DOD pedals.  You have to hit them HARD to do that.  I've actually seen a Boss TU-2 where the casing was broken.   Outside of the "how the heck do you do that?" factor, who the hack stomps that hard on their *tuner*?  I'm trying to imagine someone so intensely into the moment that they TUNE that hard. 

I usually do a pretty good job of holding my own over the pedal fortress - but my bass player keeps smacking my headstock with his.  I need a new tuner on one of my guitars, but I guess last time I took a chunk of his out as well. 

[Auke Haarsma]

I've actually seen a Boss TU-2 where the casing was broken.   Outside of the "how the heck do you do that?" factor, who the hack stomps that hard on their *tuner*?  I'm trying to imagine someone so intensely into the moment that they TUNE that hard. 

ROFL!

[Mark Hammer]

Bet you all $10 that if a pedalboard had NO distortion pedals on it, you'd never see the sort of damage described.  Bet you another $10 it doesn't happen to:

• country players
• jazz players
• funk/soul players
• alt.country players

That aside, I'd never position a toggle anywhere on its own, and alweays try to stick them where they can be protected by adjacent knobs.  I also try to keep the stompswitch as far from the knobs and switches as possible - even when you're not thrashing about, it's hard to have perfect aim when you're trying to sing into the mic, look at your audience, play an instrument AND step on a switch at the same time.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I got a Sovtek Big Muff once that was creased right down the front, like a really solid axe hit it (I don't mean a geetar!) I can't imagine how it could have been done, even with an axe... it's pretty solid. Wrecked the switch!

As for the ruined symmetry thread...... the easy way out, is an identical switch on each side!
But stompboxes are pretty asymetric by nature, haveing an in and an out.... though I do have one box I designed where the 'in' and 'out' are the same!!
(OK it isn't exactly an effect.... it is a box that converts a varying resistance pedal to a varying voltage pedal. How it does it, is it has a constant current source, that the variable resistance pedal plugs into. And then, the voltage develops across the resiatance..... as you can iagine, it doesn't matter whether you plug the resistance in THIS hole & take th volts off the other, or vice versa!)
I guess an icosahedron with a knob on each face would be pretty symmetric... you could have all the 3MS pedals in one.....

[Barcode80]

i personally cannot think of a time where i needed a toggle on a stage effect. i like em for studio stuff (a la fuzzlab) but i haven't met anyone yet who likes both positions of a toggle. why not just build it the way you want? if you are gigging, i would wager a small amount that you are using that pedal with the toggle in the same position 99.9% of the time. why build a pedal with an option you don't want? might as well label the toggle positions "good" and "crap."

Again, in the studio is a different story, where a toggle can give you a totally different sound that compliments a certain player's rig better. most times, your rig won't change on stage during a show unless you get to the point you have tech roadies

[joegagan]

+1 on the 'set it and forget it' idea

When i released the Brontoboost I thought it would be cool to give the user the ability to have single and dual gainstages on a second footswitch, there was a gain control for the two stage. common tone control for both settings. like mild boost and more boost settings

All that did was confuse some players, everyone used theirs on one setting or the other onstage according to the feedback i got from buyers

plus it added to the frustration of the user because he would want the second setting to be more versatile than it was

I don't think i will ever put two stompswitches on a commercial pedal again, it just causes unrealistic expectations and isn't used very much

the funny thing is that MANY of the boutique OD/ dist pedals have 2 footswitches now

[petemoore]

  People have amazing peripheral vision, even when drunk.
  This mad drunk chick, on her way down, glanced and saw my guitar near where she could land, and headed for the suspended middle part, going for breaking my LP, she had that look of 'I figured I'm mad and drunk enough'..but I 'reflex moved' the guitar with my foot about a foot over, so the brunt of her fall wouldn't crack the neck off the body, she compensated, managed to land on the guitar [no damage] and ripped her hand open on a 1/2 hinge of the adjacent amp rack as she went down, party got better as she was functionally incapacitated, and had to catch a taxi to go get her nasty wrist wound closed...[lol], I commented "ooouuh that looks bad...at least my guitar is ok". 
  The 'mad party star' with personality disorder type, goes for attention at any cost, preferably to someone else...you know..the kind of cat that purrs and likes pet, but will scratch you before you can get away...often the pivotal component of sad or tragic endings, sometimes funny in a sick way..
  My point being if it looks like a 'damage' area for a drunk to be falling on, [no nearly flat edges to absorb the fall, just hard looking corners, dull spikes, having a recessed area which is harder to reach well enough to exact damage], even a drunk madperson will be turned off, and look for another area to enact the fall scene.
  Mic's in stands are prime targets for getting 'fall scene attention', near perfect targets.

[Serge]

Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's in favour of the "set and forget" thing. I'm currently putting 3 more or less exact copies of my main OD in one enclosure: one preset as a boost, the other as low and high gain.  No knobs - just 3 switches.

[blanik]

i always cut the mini-switches with a dremel, only 2-3 mm of the switch arm are left but it's enough to activate by just rubbing your finger on it...   works fine

R.

[Meanderthal]

Bet you all $10 that if a pedalboard had NO distortion pedals on it, you'd never see the sort of damage described.  Bet you another $10 it doesn't happen to:

funk/soul players

I've seen small stone that got stomped flat (almost literally)by a funk guitarist who would NEVER use a dirt box... but their stage show includes a lot of aerobics...
When I heard these guys were actually dancing in the studio while they recorded their demo cd I think I broke a rib laughing. The engineer couldn't get em to behave themselves...

[Processaurus]

This was my design attempt at a bulletproof/abuseable/tourable Foxx tone machine project that is still "pending".  BTW the footswitches are bypass, octave/fuzz, and a dark pre-boost before the effect, that sounds lovely.  I found a bunch of these great old school rack handles in the trash, the radio shack knobs fit just inside them.

[joelap]

Not to pull off an uber hijack, but on the topic of setting and forgetting, does anyone know of a place that stocks pots like the ones on the blackstone mosfet overdrive?  Or does anyone know their technical name so I can look them up on mouser?  Much appreciated!

[caress]

i must be the only one here who loves switches and plenty of knobs!  but then again, i'm a keyboardist...