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Soft, quiet, clickless switches. Why don’t more builders use them?

ThinCrappyTone2

ThinCrappyTone2

Supporting Member
Jan 19, 2022
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Haverhill, MA
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#1
I never paid much attention to the sound a pedal switch made. But recently, the band has been doing a lot of live-rehearsal recording, and man, those hard clicks stand out on the recordings.

Turns out about half my pedals have soft switches, the other half have hard ones.

At this point, a loud hard switch is a deal breaker. I know the switches themselves can be swapped, but I'd like to avoid that. so instead I'm swapping the few loud clicking pedals with similar, silent-switching circuits.

Online, there are lots of great pedals that I'd consider buying, except they're loud clickers too.

Oddly—at least to me—some cheap pedals , such as TC, have a soft switch, and some expensive ones, such as Analogman, have the hard ones.

That's fine, as there are plenty of options from brands that switch quietly.

But it makes me winder if I'm missing something. I can't figure why more manufacturers, especially high end ones, are not going in the quiet switch direction?

Do some people prefer the hard click?

Is it prohibitively more expensive or complicated to make them soft?

Does it change the tone or function somehow?

Reliability issues?

Other?

Just curious what your thoughts are on this
 
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#2
Click-less normally includes a relay that does the actual switching. More parts.

I don't have to have a hard click, but there are times I prefer that feel/feedback when I'm turning something on or off. IME also less of a chance of a double step, where I turn on and back off when I only wanted to turn something on (only ever happened to me with the click-less pedals).

You could add a loop switcher of some sort that had the soft switches to do the switching on instead of the pedals themselves.
 
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#5
joel the bass player said:
Click-less normally includes a relay that does the actual switching. More parts.

I don't have to have a hard click, but there are times I prefer that feel/feedback when I'm turning something on or off. IME also less of a chance of a double step, where I turn on and back off when I only wanted to turn something on (only ever happened to me with the click-less pedals).

You could add a loop switcher of some sort that had the soft switches to do the switching on instead of the pedals themselves.
Click to expand...

bassbrad said:
Because so many players insist on "true bypass" and because it is cheaper.

On a loud and dark stage I find the click as positive indicator of an effect being active or off.

I use a Boss LS2 bypass looper to cut down on switching noise and also to have one button as my usual target instead of tap dancing.
Click to expand...

Loop switcher is a good idea. I was trying to avoid that, but it might well be the best solution.
 
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#6
ThinCrappyTone2 said:
Loop switcher is a good idea. I was trying to avoid that, but it might well be the best solution.
Click to expand...
It just makes things so much simpler especially if you use a lot of effects and are constantly changing sounds. I started using a loop switcher decades ago with a Boss PSM5, the LS2 allows me to wet/dry mix or have 2 loops.
Main Pedalboard 11-20-2023.jpg
 
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#12
bassbrad said:
Because so many players insist on "true bypass" and because it is cheaper.

On a loud and dark stage I find the click as positive indicator of an effect being active or off.

I use a Boss LS2 bypass looper to cut down on switching noise and also to have one button as my usual target instead of tap dancing.
Click to expand...
Lots of buffered pedals can mess with the signal, whereas true bypass won't. There are fors and againsts with both.
 
#13
ThinCrappyTone2 said:
I never paid much attention to the sound a pedal switch made. But recently, the band has been doing a lot of live-rehearsal recording, and man, those hard clicks stand out on the recordings.

Turns out about half my pedals have soft switches, the other half have hard ones.

At this point, a loud hard switch is a deal breaker. I know the switches themselves can be swapped, but I'd like to avoid that. so instead I'm swapping the few loud clicking pedals with similar, silent-switching circuits.

Online, there are lots of great pedals that I'd consider buying, except they're loud clickers too.

Oddly—at least to me—some cheap pedals , such as TC, have a soft switch, and some expensive ones, such as Analogman, have the hard ones.

That's fine, as there are plenty of options from brands that switch quietly.

But it makes me winder if I'm missing something. I can't figure why more manufacturers, especially high end ones, are not going in the quiet switch direction?

Do some people prefer the hard click?

Is it prohibitively more expensive or complicated to make them soft?

Does it change the tone or function somehow?

Reliability issues?

Other?

Just curious what your thoughts are on this
Click to expand...
I normally haven't cared much for clicking vs clickless switches, but something I've noticed is that clickless switches can sometimes have very non-positive engagement. The Cali76CB is one that comes to mind-- it takes a decent amount of force, and to borrow a term from firearms, the trigger is quite mushy. That's not so much a big deal, but it can put people off.

More of a functional issue with me is a new pedal that I got with relay-based switching, the Broughton Subsonic, where the switch seems to actuate at a slightly different depth than others. In this case, you need to press the switch in really far to actuate it, and combined with the lack of feedback from being clickless, I've sometimes stomped on the pedal only for it to not activate because I was being too ginger or using my muscle memory from other pedals
 
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#14
TBH there are certain effects I like a soft switch (Octave being one, because I often switch on-off quickly, tap tempo being another) but for some things like my master mute I really want to feel it click under my foot
 
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#15
BTW True bypass has nothing to do with who hard the click is. It means the input jack is hardwired to the output jack when the pedal is off, so the circuit is bypassed. This can be done with all types of switches.

Hard click is cheap, it's a standard footswitch and a few wires. Soft click requires a temporary footswitch and a separate board with a relay and a few other components. More expensive and more labor. Possibly less prone to issues since the temporary switches are supposed to be more durable.
Ironically the only footswitch that failed for me was a temp one that I used with a relay board.
 
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#17
andare said:
BTW True bypass has nothing to do with who hard the click is. It means the input jack is hardwired to the output jack when the pedal is off, so the circuit is bypassed. This can be done with all types of switches.

Hard click is cheap, it's a standard footswitch and a few wires. Soft click requires a temporary footswitch and a separate board with a relay and a few other components. More expensive and more labor. Possibly less prone to issues since the temporary switches are supposed to be more durable.
Ironically the only footswitch that failed for me was a temp one that I used with a relay board.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the info!
 

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