shin-ei univibe foot controller

[joe weed]

i know this has been hit on many times before, but haven't found the answer yet.  is there a kit available to build a fc for the original?  or is there directions on how to modify a dunlop fc to work?  sorry but i need a little more direction than just a schematic, not that good yet.  appreciate any productive info.  aloha.

[joe weed]

bump.
anyone?
please?

[Rodgre]

I would love to know as well, though I do recall seeing some schematics, maybe courtesy of RG Keen, of the original that may have shown the pinout of the foot controller DIN connector. Haven't looked into it lately, though.

Roger

[R.G.]

The foot controller has two things in it. It has the dual speed pot, and the switch that operates "cancel". The original univibe had no bypass. It just killed the LFO.

This takes a minimum of five wires. One each goes to the wiper of each half of the dual speed pot, one goes to the common terminal of the two speed pots. None of these wires may be grounded. The cancel switch is one wire which is connected to ground by the cancel switch, so the cancel plus one other wire. The ground wire may also be connected to a shield if you use it, but no audio runs in this cable, so no shielding is really needed. I believe the original connector was a five pin mini-DIN.

I haven't seen a foot controller in a long time. I believe that the originals used a dual 100K or 250K audio pot for the speed control, and the mechanical rocker mechanism made it turn "backwards", causing an effective reverse log taper. I'd have to go check my notes if I can find them.

The cancel switch was arranged to be connected when the rocker was heel-down and open as you rocked it toward toe-down.

Having the schematic is substantially useless unless you also have the actual rocker mechanism. Otherwise you have to somehow modify another rocker to work the same way, including putting in a cancel switch. If you have a real mechanism, the places to connect to the board are simple to figure out from the Neovibe wiring.

So do you have a real univibe rocker you're trying to rewire, or are  you trying to make a new one?

[mth5044]

To put pictures to RG's description. I have the main unit open at the moment to take some pictures for a fellow, but the nuts are holding the PCB on so well, I need to wait for my soldering iron to arrive to get them to move. In any case, here is the inside of the foot controller. Couldn't get to the values of the pots, but I read them with a multimeter. The pot closest to the treadle reads 88k at heal down (off) and 2k at full on. The further pot reads 90k and 2k at off and full on respectively. Since they are soldered together at the middle lug, I'm not sure if those readings even matter.

[R.G.]

The pot closest to the treadle reads 88k at heal down (off) and 2k at full on. The further pot reads 90k and 2k at off and full on respectively. Since they are soldered together at the middle lug, I'm not sure if those readings even matter.

Thanks for the illustrative pics. I think that means that the nominal value of the pots is 100K, as I thought I remembered.

[joe weed]

trying to build a new one from scratch, if i can.  this info is very helpful but i still need to know how the connector is wired (which wire to which pin).  this is a great start.  thanks for tall the help.  keep it coming if there's more.  aloha.