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

[micguy]

If one of my pedals were too loud for my taste, I think I'd want its replacement to have a lighted switch to confirm pedal status without the noisy switching.

Don't pretty much all pedals nowadays have led's to tell you that they're on or off?

I've been playing since the very early days of pedals. By far, the biggest advance in pedals in my lifetime was the inclusion of LED status lights. Before that, pedal boards were usually 4, maybe 5 pedals max. Why? If you have 3 modulation pedals, and no indicators to show which one is on, and you turn "off "the thing you thought was "on", you now have 2 modulation pedals on, and you're screwed - getting all the modulation turned off will take you completely out of your playing state of mind. Back then, you kept things simple - if you didn't, you'd get lost in terms of your pedal status all the time.

 

[HelpImaRock]

I've never had a preference for switches. I also have no preference for side jacks, which is another hot topic around these parts.

That said, some builders use hard click switches because it's what they're known for. A builder like Analogman likely made their name in the true bypass era when that hard click switch was a "new and improved" feature. Sensibilities are certainly changing and soft switching is definitely becoming more prominent. It's not better or worse, just different. Can't please everyone.

 

[micguy]

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.

Momentary contact switches (what you're calling temporary) are much simpler devices than latching ones. If designed correctly (there's an if in that statement), they should be more reliable. "Should be" doesn't alway equal "is".

 

[jbybj]

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

If you grow tired of the Subsonic switch, please consider me as the next owner.

 

[Plectrum72]

Not sure! I haven't clicked a boss in many years. Nothing against them, I just have one old cs-2 that hasn't gotten the call in a while

Yeah, they don't make my favorite pedals in many categories, but I love their nearly indestructible enclosures/switches.

 

[DaveParker39]

Would you consider a Boss style pedal a hard click or a soft click?

Soft. I rest my foot on my OC-2 and apply pressure to turn it on/off.

 

[Spidey2112]

In a world where bassists are oft ignored, the hard switch is yet another attempt for the audience to pay attention to them.

(audience member #1): What in the heck were those pops?
(audience member #2): Bass player just went into chorus mode, with some hairy distortion and just a touch of delay.
(audience member #1): Hey, look... a beach ball.

 

[Killing Floor]

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.

Yep. This.
Even though true bypass is not necessary AT ALL and NUNNA-Y'ALL would know without watching the YouTube review, it's more common than not. It even has marketing value.

As far as positive indications, if I can't tell when a pedal is on it doesn't belong on my board.

 

[rratajski]

If a standard 3pdt footswitch or momentary spdt footswitch fails, it's one piece of hardware.
If the relay or something related to the relay fails, it's more time intensive and could be harder to troubleshoot/replace bad parts.
Brands build in the cost of relays/circuitry/hardware into their cost. Same goes for 3pdt standards. The latter costs less and is just one part that works as true as time.
For most, it's about the cost, added circuitry, and ease of repair.
As a builder, I'd rather not pass on any of that cost to my customer. Every brand has a different plan with switches.

 

[eddododo]

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.

You can still have true bypass with a soft switch

 

[eddododo]

Yep. This.
Even though true bypass is not necessary AT ALL and NUNNA-Y'ALL would know without watching the YouTube review, it's more common than not. It even has marketing value.

As far as positive indications, if I can't tell when a pedal is on it doesn't belong on my board.

It has its place, and unfortunately we still aren't quite in an era where we've eradicated crummy buffers with too small of an input cap, such that the additive high pass effect can indeed become an issue depending on your favorite pedals..

Personally, I prefer to have at LEAST one buffered bypass and/or something always-on early in the chain.. after that I'm more than fine with true bypass or good buffered bypasses… but there are pedals in my collection that I 'have' to run an external bypass/loop for, as their effect isn't negligible, particularly if I'm running a synth or some synth pedals.


But you're also right, the 2000's fad of cork-sniffing about true-bypass is not only passé and unnecessary, but is harmful to your tone at a certain point, especially on a big board… show me a 20-pedal board that's all true-bypass, and I'll show you a fool with irrecoverably rolled off highs

 

[DaveParker39]

Seems like there are some myths that need busted here.
Myth 1- "Soft Switch means not true bypass"- This is not necessarily true. There are pedals with true/hardwire bypass with "soft" switches (Maxon OD-9, for example)
Myth 2- "Hard Switch means true bypass"- also not true, a hard switch can be in a buffered circuit (Ibanez OD-850)
Myth 3- "Hard Switch means audible pop through amplifier"- can be true, most common in true bypass circuits, but certainly not universal. In a pedal with a good quality buffer/line driver (pete cornish, for example) you will not have an audible pop engaging the pedal.

 

[ThinCrappyTone2]

In a world where bassists are oft ignored, the hard switch is yet another attempt for the audience to pay attention to them.

(audience member #1): What in the heck were those pops?
(audience member #2): Bass player just went into chorus mode, with some hairy distortion and just a touch of delay.
(audience member #1): Hey, look... a beach ball.

soo… switches should be even louder! yes!

 

[Spidey2112]

Pro tip: Learn to time the pop with the beat, and it's percussive enough to blend right in.

 

[Slevage]

Click-less normally includes a relay that does the actual switching. More parts.

Switching a relay is probably not necessary for the low currents in most of our pedals. A momentary, quiet switch can do the job by turning a solid state device (transistor) on or off OR the switch is an input to an embedded micro processor ("chip").

 

[Eilif]

Seems like there are some myths that need busted here.
Myth 1- "Soft Switch means not true bypass"- This is not necessarily true. There are pedals with true/hardwire bypass with "soft" switches (Maxon OD-9, for example)
Myth 2- "Hard Switch means true bypass"- also not true, a hard switch can be in a buffered circuit (Ibanez OD-850)
Myth 3- "Hard Switch means audible pop through amplifier"- can be true, most common in true bypass circuits, but certainly not universal. In a pedal with a good quality buffer/line driver (pete cornish, for example) you will not have an audible pop engaging the pedal.

One additional possible myth.
Soft is more expensive than hard.
Just look inside your Behringer Boss-alikes to find a cheap little soft switch.

As for me, I like the click that let's me know a hard switch is engaging. I do little recording though and rarely use pedals on bass.

However, even when activating my pedals by hand (pedalboard on a stand) with my pedal steel, I like that hard click, though I do use button caps to save my palms from bruises when I slap the pedals.

 

[wysiwyg248]

Ironically the only footswitch that failed for me was a temp one that I used with a relay board

It is not ironic, it is reliability. Since the temp has more parts, the failure modes multiply.
I am old school and prefer the switch, as it gives me a signal about being on or off without having to look at it.

 

[JimmyM]

Couldn't care less one way or the other. Can't hear it in a band context anyway.

 

[SteveCS]

by the way, does anyone know of any soft-click multi-loop switchers? Most of them seem to be true bypass, which means, I think, a hard click?

The Electro-Harmonix Tri-Parallel Mixer (TPM) is a soft-switching multi-loop pedal.
Tri Parallel Mixer | Effects Loop Mixer / Switcher - Electro-Harmonix

 

[el murdoque]

Since I read "Loop Switcher" here multiple times:
Most (all?) of the soft switching pedals have a default state to which they power up once power is connected.
I have had a soft switching pedal on my board, hidden in the lower tier because it has side jacks and does not fit up top and because I use a loop switcher and don't need to access the pedal at all. Only that its default state is 'off'. Every time I switch on the power supply, I'll have to remember to reach down into the bowels of my board and switch on that one pedal.

A simple clicky switch remains in the state you left it in.