J.P.'s Gear Blerbs - T-Rex, the Quint Machine, and the crappy footswitch

 


I'm starting J.P.'s Gear Blerbs because I haven't been able to sit down and write a full-blown blog post in quite some time. These are not reviews or editorial columns, but just random thoughts about gear and whatever I'm working on at the moment.


I recently acquired a T-Rex Quint Machine polyphonic octave pedal, and while it's incredibly fun and sounds great (demoed briefly here), there is one thing I do not particularly like about it: the footswitch.

It uses one of these terrible small-footprint DPDT clicky momentary off-on footswitches. I hate dislike them very much. Not only are they clicky (which should be outlawed for momentary footswitches), but their travel is very short, the click happens at the very end of said travel, and it requires way too much force to toggle. They are not particularly responsive either, which makes them unfun to use. Also, why a DPDT switch in the first place? There's only 2 wires going to the lugs!

These footswitches are atrocious. Don't use them in your builds.

While I do have other more suitable momentary footswitches in stock, they have one single problem: they key on the threaded shaft is on the wrong side. Of course, T-Rex designed a keyed hole for the footswitch, which limits how you can install the switch itself, and which ones you can actually use. 

Use these switches instead. Much nicer, not clicky.

Be wary of the key. Usually not an issue for drilled holes, but molded enclosures might be problematic.

Because I'm not about to file part of the enclosure just to change the footswitch, I shopped around for a decent replacement keyed correctly and found this one on Solo Music Gear.

Image "borrowed" from Solo Music Gear's website. The key is facing towards the contacts compared to the switch I had in my stash.

It fits (barely; it hangs over the PCB but it's not shorting anything) and it's a lot better than whatever T-Rex used originally. 15$ (including shipping) and a 2-minute soldering job can get you a pretty good upgraded user experience. However, it's an upgrade that shouldn't be necessary on a 140$ pedal...

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