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Post by rabidgerry on Feb 16, 2015 7:29:05 GMT -5
Hi guy's I have an idea I would like to implement on a footswitch made by Behringer. Yes love em or hate em, it's a behringer pedal. Ok the pedal is a very very useful footswitch, the AB200, see the link below for details if you can be bothered. www.behringer.com/EN/Products/AB200.aspxRight, the nitty gritty. This pedal runs of a 9V battery. This sucks!!! All the battery seems to be required for is for the led's. Personnally this is a rubbish limitation, as it means the battery is always required for the pedal to operate, well that and you always need a jack plugged into A1 input to work. What I think would be a good idea would be if this pedal could be modified in a way that would allow me to use it with or without a battery. So basically if the battery runs out at a gig, I wont be screwed and I can still use the pedal to change channels etc. Do you guys think this is possible? I will post picks of the inside once I get back home to show you all the circuit  Thanks for reading folks!!! |
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Post by JFrankParnell on Feb 16, 2015 11:31:51 GMT -5
Seems like it would be easy to just get the snap part of a 9v and hook it to a jack, which would receive the juice from a wall wart. Just hook it up temporary to see how it works (shud be fine, but I'm kinda dum, electrically).
Hopefully, a smarter guy will tell us if it's ok to have wall wart juice and a 9v battery, in parallel. I dunno, maybe that would overcharge the battery, make it splode, or something...
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Post by ashcatlt on Feb 16, 2015 12:09:34 GMT -5
If it was actually true that the only thing the battery does is light the LEDs, then you wouldn't actually need the battery, but this thing uses relays to accomplish the switching, and there may be some simple logic circuit in there, too. It needs power.
Most of what it does could be done passively, and easily, but you'd have to choose either latching or momentary. There are commercial options out there or you could build your own. I'd imagine you could probably hack this one to be passive and non-latching, but it won't be worth the trouble to try and get it to be passive and latching. Better to just sell it and buy a passive A/B or two.
It's not a great idea to put the battery directly parallel to a wallwart. You could use steering diodes to keep things from exploding, or a switching DC jack to disconnect the battery when the wallwart is plugged in. But it you're feeding the wallwart in via the existing battery snap, then how is the battery connected? Right, it's not. This is the easiest solution, and probably best. If there was actual circuitry in the audio path, you might want to add an RC filter to clean up the wallwart power, but it shouldn't be necessary here.
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Post by sumgai on Feb 16, 2015 20:53:42 GMT -5
ash has it correct, there are relays (of the solid-state variety) in there, thus the need for a battery.
The switch used is a nearly universal momentary contact type. In other words, it doesn't actually conduct the audio signal, and turn it off, on, one way, or the other - it only triggers a relay that does those jobs. The only way to go totally passive would be to replace them, period. Sadly, that may prove to be more of a pain, as heavy-duty stomp switches are usually not made in this form factor. (If anyone knows of such, please - speak up.)
As to putting in a separate power supply.... my favorite trick is to install a "phantom" power supply, using (in this case) a breakout box, a stereo cable and a stereo jack in place of one of the current jacks. There's a bit more to it than that, but rather than go into all the gory details just now, think it over. If you fancy this idea and you want more details, I'll be happy to draw up a diagram, with appropriate descriptive verbiage.
HTH
sumgai
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Post by rabidgerry on Feb 17, 2015 5:47:41 GMT -5
ash has it correct, there are relays (of the solid-state variety) in there, thus the need for a battery. The switch used is a nearly universal momentary contact type. In other words, it doesn't actually conduct the audio signal, and turn it off, on, one way, or the other - it only triggers a relay that does those jobs. The only way to go totally passive would be to replace them, period. Sadly, that may prove to be more of a pain, as heavy-duty stomp switches are usually not made in this form factor. (If anyone knows of such, please - speak up.) As to putting in a separate power supply.... my favorite trick is to install a "phantom" power supply, using (in this case) a breakout box, a stereo cable and a stereo jack in place of one of the current jacks. There's a bit more to it than that, but rather than go into all the gory details just now, think it over. If you fancy this idea and you want more details, I'll be happy to draw up a diagram, with appropriate descriptive verbiage. HTH sumgai Hi all and thanks for your thoughts. I am reallllllyyy gutted!!!! I thought this would be easy lol some day I will want to modify something that will be easy  Anyways.........I guess all I wanted was to allow the device to operate without the need for a battery and not really care if the LEDS worked or not although a perfect scenario would have been that I could use it with a battery but when the battery ran out it would still function but just not the LEDs. Apologies I have not got the circuit posted up yet, was busy last night. sumgai, interesting idea about the phantom power, it would be a nice little neat way of fueling the device, however I have nothing on my live rig that I could draw phantom power from. If could perhaps utilize the idea on my studio setup. Not sure what I want to do now. I did come across some mods else where actually, none of which were what I wanted to do, but interesting none the less. link |
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