Sustain Pedal Hacks

[elsongs]

If you're a gigging keyboardist, you likely have two problems with sustain pedals:

1. Getting them to stay put on the floor
2. Failing often

Number one has already been talked about on this forum fairly often. So I'm here to talk about number two. 

I would say 90% of sustain pedal failures have to do with their achilles heel: Cable wear within three inches of where it comes out of the pedal housing. We have myriad methods of sustain cable storage, whether wrapping it around the pedal housing, or bundling it with a cable tie, or making a circular bundle. But chances are that through regular use and transportation, the cable closest to the housing invariably gets worn out over time. 

You can fix this easily with a soldering iron and wire stripper. Just disassemble the sustain pedal housing, de-solder the wires, snip around 3-4 inches from the end, re-strip and re-solder. The pedal will be as good as new -- until it gets worn out again.

During my second to last gig, one of my pedals went intermittent - the pedal failed to work for a few minutes into my set, but it managed to work out for the rest of the gig. For my gig after that, lacking time to repair the pedal from the last gig, I grabbed another pedal. Guess what - it was also intermittent and did not work for portions of a song or two.

So I decided to get proactive - I recently took a coiled wire cable wear guard (I forgot the actual terminology for these things, sorry) from a spare 1/4" jack part and de-soldered the cable from my Roland DP-10, inserted the cable wear guard in the wire and placed it right where the cable leaves the housing. Hopefully this will keep the end of the cable from wearing out from use, storage and transportation.



There's another hack you can do - Get a mono 1/4" female jack part from an electronic parts store, snipping most of your sustain pedal cable off, stripping the bare end and wiring that into the 1/4" jack - You would then use a standard 1/4" instrument cable to plug between the sustain pedal and your keyboard. I did that with an older DP-10 (before the switch element failed). 

In an ideal world, sustain pedals should just have a jack at one end so you can use a spare instrument cable to connect it to your keyboard. That way, there's no cable parts to wear out!

[vonnor]

Haven't had this problem since the mid 80's. That's when I started bolting the pedals down to a unified pedalboard of some kind, running the pedal's cables under the board to a junction box, and fanning out each conductor to its own solder pin in a multi-channel circular twist-lock connector. A snake connects to the junction box and runs up the side of the keyboard stand to pig-tail out to the correct rear-panel jack of the correct keyboard. Easy setup and tear-down, and zero wear-and-tear on the pedal cables.

 

Oh and it solves the other mentioned issue as well.

 

~ vonnor

 

[Baldwin Funster]

Try pulling out the fixed cable and put a 1/4" jack .

[Reezekeys]

Nice solution there (both of them). I agree it would make sense to have a jack on the sustain pedal, but that would either make the mfr have to include a 1/4" cable (making the BOM higher - don't forget the jack!) or make you buy one if you didn't have a spare. Bad for business! 🙂 

 

I used to go through an expression pedal every few years. This hack I came up with has let me keep my current pedal for a long time. You can easily do this with a sustain pedal too. When my cable went bad I removed it, cut off the length that was bad (right where it exited the pedal of course), then resoldered it, adding two layers of heat-shrink tubing and a rubber grommet. I also tied a knot in the cable inside the pedal for strain relief. I can see some of the heatshrink is wearing a little, but it's been years since I've done this and my cheapo M-Audio EXP has worked perfectly ever since.

 

[Docbop]

Also through in after years of SysAdmin work and dealing with USERs and desktop support people.....   Don't wind up in tight loops or wind around your pedal.   Every type of cable has a minimum curve to trying not to bend past to increase the life of the cable.    Doing what Reezekeys said with the extra shrink tubing to stiffen the cable where it typically gets bent the most is very helpful.   Wind cables up loosely and use velcro or some sort of tie if you need something.

 

That Yes tour I crewed on Clair Brother was the PA company on the  tour and Roy Clair traveled with us.  Roy Clair attitude was cables are your life blood and if you mistreated cable no matter if you worked for Clair or just crew for the show you'd get an earful from Roy.    Step on a cable and you might as well start packing your bag Roy was going to get you.    Working in the studio was same thing in how you wound up cables.    

[Delaware Dave]

Within the past year I had to fix my Ensoniq sustain pedal (it's the 4" x 4" type pedal).  That pedal came with my VFX that I purchased in 1990.  I still use it as a leslie speed switch.  The pedal is 32 years old.  Other than that pedal I had one double pedal failure but it wasn't the cord, the mechanism itself wore out.  That pedal is from the mid-90's.  Other than those two events of pedals with a combined age of 55 years I've had no other sustain pedal issues.  I'm anal about wrapping the cables up so that there is always strain relief and also when I lay them out I also ensure there is strain relief.  Could there be a correlation between my pedals longevity and the strain relief I ensure that they have?

[obxa]

Thanks for this idea!!   I 'm starting to really love the silver Roland/Boss FS-5U squares because they use jacks, plus:  polarity switches. are compact, and  can be inter-locked.  They also feel pretty good for being small, and don't seem to slide as much. 

 

 I have a graveyard of Yamaha and Kurzweil pedals I'd love to fix.  One of the Yamahas has half-pedaling with a stereo plug.   Anyone have  thoughts on how this would be wired to stereo jack?

 

 

Your post made me want to share:   My wife is a high school teacher.   At the end of the school year she ends up with a crazy collection of phone charging cables that don't get claimed.  Some  nice, some trashed.    I noticed on one of the iPhone cables, some brilliant student had taken ball point pen springs and repurposed them into stress wraps on the backs of the  cable frayed connectors.  Have no idea if that was tick-tock hack, but was impressed!! 

 

[Mr -G-]

Talking about springs... "plastic spring binders" are really useful too. Not only keep the bending to a minimum but they also keep the rest of the cable away from the pedal.

[Delaware Dave]

14 hours ago, obxa said:

 I have a graveyard of Yamaha and Kurzweil pedals I'd love to fix. 

If you are going to trash them send them to me; I like to have pedals in my gig bag, my practice area and my studio.  If I don't have to pack them up and can just have them at a location it's one less thing to have to remember to pack up everytime there is a gig, a jam or practice not at my house. 

[elsongs]

16 hours ago, Mr -G- said:

Talking about springs... "plastic spring binders" are really useful too. Not only keep the bending to a minimum but they also keep the rest of the cable away from the pedal.

You mean like these? 

[Adam Burgess]

On 1/9/2023 at 10:13 PM, Jr. Deluxe said:

Try pulling out the fixed cable and put a 1/4" jack .

Yup. Fitted jack sockets into my 3x Korg DS pedals. Been fine for years and years.

 

[elsongs]

On 1/9/2023 at 10:13 AM, Jr. Deluxe said:

Try pulling out the fixed cable and put a 1/4" jack .

Already mentioned in the original post.

[Mr -G-]

15 hours ago, elsongs said:

You mean like these? 

 

Yes!