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NPD: Terrible Design

#41
rogerbmiller said:
The only thing ill-conceived here is the use of pancaked right-angle plugs for a pedal. Period. The end.
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Even with an EBS plug, if you’re taking that output jack to an input jack on a pedal to its immediate left, you might encounter issues because the power jack might be in the way on a flat pedal board.
 
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#43
Hasty said:
Even with an EBS plug, if you’re taking that output jack to an input jack on a pedal to its immediate left, you might encounter issues because the power jack might be in the way on a flat pedal board.
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That's true but that cable that the other TB'r put up looks like what I need. This is my small board, I have two others, one for the studio and a midi only one. re cabling this one shouldn't be that expensive.
 
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#45
Learning more about these pedals as I continue to mess with them. They react pretty differently to almost every bass used. They don't like actives, so I'll probably just use my passives...also it's doesn't have a very wide spread meaning once you find the best setting for the particular vbass you're using, that's it, that's my experience so far..
 
#46
Just posting a pic of the pedals on the board.
20220606_231507.jpg
 
#50
JakobT said:
The input and output being that close is one thing - but the power?

As far as I can see, you won’t be able to use anything but a straight jack for the output, as the 9V plug will keep any angled plug from seating properly, large or small. If they had put the power in the middle, there would be room enough for both input and output, even with the pancake jack plugs you’re using, and the power wouldn’t interfere with anything.
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While I agree that the power jack would have made more sense in the center, I disagree that its current placement prevents an angled plug from being used for the signal output. It does limit the angled plug to going either up or down, rather to the side, and that may be inconvenient, but angled plugs could still be used.

The angled plugs chosen by the OP will not work, but plugs without pancakes will work.
 
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#55
odarellmc said:
Point being I'm sure the majority of us don't buy new cables every time we buy a new pedal. Ordinarily these cables are no issue, but with Mu Tron they need to let people know these cables which are very common won't work with these pedals.
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To be fair, compact pedals are a fairly recent development. It's a little unreasonable to expect a cable end design that was in use during the heyday* of giant pedals to work equally as well with small pedals.

*I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my early 60s, and those plugs were "very common" when I was a teenager.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I agree that on your pedal, the power jack placement is a sub-optimum design.
 
#57
BlueTalon said:
While I agree that the power jack would have made more sense in the center, I disagree that its current placement prevents an angled plug from being used for the signal output. It does limit the angled plug to going either up or down, rather to the side, and that may be inconvenient, but angled plugs could still be used.

The angled plugs chosen by the OP will not work, but plugs without pancakes will work.
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Kinda sorta. I guess it’s possible to make it work (@mmbongo and others have made the same point), if the angled plugs are small enough, and you angle them inconveniently.

But that’s still a long way from being a good or even reasonable design, as you shouldn’t need to do difficult cable yoga just in order to connect the thing, and it would have been ridiculously easy to avoid that problem altogether by just moving the power jack between the input and output jacks.

Not only that, but the whole point of top-mounted jacks is to be able to move pedals closer together, but the position of the foot switches is so close to the edges of the pedal that your foot will overlap any pedal placed that close, increasing the chances of pressing the foot switch on the pedal next door as well, so the top-mounted jacks are a bad and unneccesary choice anyway.

So can it be made to work? Possible, but difficult. Is it good? No.
 
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#60
JakobT said:
Kinda sorta. I guess it’s possible to make it work (@mmbongo and others have made the same point), if the angled plugs are small enough, and you angle them inconveniently.

But that’s still a long way from being a good or even reasonable design, as you shouldn’t need to do difficult cable yoga just in order to connect the thing, and it would have been ridiculously easy to avoid that problem altogether by just moving the power jack between the input and output jacks.
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I agree about the power jack not being in the best location. For me, though, the restriction on the angled plugs would not be an inconvenience, since I like my cables to angle down anyway.

JakobT said:
Not only that, but the whole point of top-mounted jacks is to be able to move pedals closer together, but the position of the foot switches is so close to the edges of the pedal that your foot will overlap any pedal placed that close, increasing the chances of pressing the foot switch on the pedal next door as well, so the top-mounted jacks are a bad and unneccesary choice anyway.
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You make a good point, but it's more of a problem with something like the MuTron pedals in question where there are two footswitches on them. On a pedal of the same size but with only one footswitch on it, it's less of a problem.

Still, that's the essence of the compromise. A pedalboard only has so many square centimeters. Small pedals allow more effects to exist on one board. How small is too small? That's a question each consumer has to answer for him/herself.
 

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