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Re: Seeking Switches



At 8:09 AM -0800 11/6/02, Tim Nelson wrote:
>When the Akai Headrush first came out, we had a thread about noisy 
>switches interfering with acoustic (miked) looping. Then when the 
>DL-4 came out, I noticed that it had quieter switches.

>Without opening them up, I'd venture to guess that if they are the 
>same switches, the DL-4 switches might be mounted differently, maybe 
>with rubber grommets or something similar that damps them. Or maybe 
>it's just the greater mass of the housing on the Line 6.

It can be illuminating to open up your equipment and see what's 
really going on behind the visible (and tangible) controls. What most 
of us perceive as "the switch" is in many cases a mechanical 
interface to an internal small switch attached to the circuit board. 
This is the case with the DL-4 and the PMC-10, for instance. The 
metal object that you click with your foot is actually a sort of 
metal "finger" that presses a tiny (and fragile) switch inside.

So the solution to noisy switches can be to replace the purely 
mechanical part with a quieter equivalent. As long as positive 
contact is made with the "real" switch, without inflicting damage on 
it, the modified control should work.

I can't offer any specific solutions, though I'd be interested in such.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com