Re: Volume pedals

[Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

On Monday, April 21, 2003, at 07:18 PM, William R. Walker, wrote:

> I can't believe people dog the Ernie Ball volume pedal on this site.

Are people putting them down?  I asked why volume pedals in general are 
so expensive.  Yeah, I do like my Morley.  It's lasted many years with 
no trouble.  It doesn't seem to change my tone at all as far as I can 
tell.  I've also had EB pedals and thought they were good too... until 
they got scratchy.  I guess I just like the idea of a frictionless 
solution.

I don't know much about manufacturing, but I still have a hard time 
believing a hinged bit of die cast metal and a pot can run you $100.  I 
also have a hard time thinking a bunch of sheet metal, an LED and an 
optical diode can cost the same.  For $30 more you can get the Behringer 
FCB1010 midi controller.  Doesn't that seem odd?

Anyone remember the ART pedals that used a kind of bar code like data 
strip?  It was optically read and used to transmit midi data.  Kind of 
like a very crude CD.

Anyway, their both good products, I was just trying to understand what 
it is about them that makes them so expensive compared to what seem to 
be more complicated pieces of gear.  Maybe the question I should be 
asking is "How the hell can Digitech make a multieffects pedal for $99?  
I don't know about the guitar one, but a friend bought the BP200 to run 
her Stick through, and I thought it sounded pretty good.  (yeah, she 
blew all her money on the instrument!)

OK, I'm babbling.  I didn't mean to cut anyone or anything down.