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Post subject: Anyone still experiencing footswitch issues?
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 8:49 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:53 pm
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Mine has worked perfect since last update, then all of a sudden for no reason it's freezing up again or taking a long time to sense that a footswitch function has been triggered. It's not constant but intermittent. I have has to turn the amp off and back on to get it to normalize a few times. Kinda hoping it's not just me because if it is i can't expect a fix. Haven't tried another cable yet, but i can't imagine it's that since it's just been used at home for the most part, so the cable doesn't get pulled and moved around and has had very little use.

So if anyone else has this issue speak up here so fender will recognize the issue.


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Post subject: Re: Anyone still experiencing footswitch issues?
Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 1:23 pm
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Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2017 1:46 pm
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Shooting from the hip and I know you already know some of this. I'm reasonably sure that most of the footswitch circuity used to send signals to the amp is changing DC voltage levels to indicate a button has been depressed. Not a high-tech digital stream but cheap parts won the day. I was able to confirm this by just setting a specific voltage level and the amp switched. Firmware upgrades can't do anything for the footpedal so they probably opened the DC voltage level detection window at the amp ( guessing it has to be some kind of comparator circuit) and then things worked. The MIII using the identical footswitch never had a problem since there were 2 separate footswitch circuits and less complex switching functions for the large pedal and larger detection windows. When you have to cram everything in one switch then you have to shrink the size of the detection windows. There's more to it but that's simple enough to explain why I'm going to suggest the troubleshooting approach. As time goes by the phone jacks and plugs always oxidize. Every guitarist that's been around is used to twisting a cable if they hear static and noises from the guitar jack and cable into the amp jack. In the DC level footswitch world part aging of the plugs, jacks and cord wires can easily add enough resistance to push the DC level out of the sweet spot and then wacky footswitch again. SO, (if anyone is still awake) clean jacks, swap or clean the plugs on cords, and try a real short cord to see if any of that helps. If you have a digital Multimeter hook it up and then watch what's going on when you switch. You might need a decent Oscilloscope to see glitches since I'm not sure how long the comparator looks for the DC level before it decides to switch. Good luck I hate these kind of problems and hope you can figure it out.


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Post subject: Re: Anyone still experiencing footswitch issues?
Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 2:36 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:53 pm
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MYREL Tech wrote:
As time goes by the phone jacks and plugs always oxidize. switch.


I'm very aware of that and believe i fixed it the other day. Read my last post in this thread i posted a day or 2 ago... https://forums.fender.com/viewtopic.php ... 8&start=45


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Post subject: Re: Anyone still experiencing footswitch issues?
Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:28 pm
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You're so right. Unfortunately connector connections are a real problem with everything after even small amounts of time. It's good to get the word out about soldering the offending connector. What worries me is the connectors keep getting smaller and more densely packed and like the Phones, using Conductive traces on flexible plastic tape can't be far off. Then fixing connections is going to get even harder


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Post subject: Re: Anyone still experiencing footswitch issues?
Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 5:15 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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And this was already small ad tough to do ! I had to use a eye loop to see what i was doing and super small wire and to bypass 9 pins that way took me at least an hour if not more. And while the ti on my iron is small it should have been 1/2 the size to do this. Believe me, i did my share of cussing ! This is the kind of connector that is not a cable but gold 90 degree pins soldered to one board then a small board with the footswitch circuit on is is shoved onto the pins which go into a female connector soldered to the board. There's a solder pad of each female socket sticking out from the plastic connector and i soldered from those to the tips of the pins. Real PITA. This could be such an awesome amp if they just built some hardware quality into it and and did a few firmware tweaks to make for better control live, which it really needs IMO.

Anyways, if you wanted to bulletproof the amp and hardwire all connectors we're talking about probably a full days work if not more. If i were still gigging and was using this amp i'd probably do that, tho not all in one sitting. At my age that would kill me. :shock:


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