one very important effect combination in my line-up of pedals is the boss dd-5 delay coupled with an external tap tempo. below is a picture of that isolated set-up back when i realized how much i liked it (think where the streets have no name).
the fs-5u did its job and did it well…but it took up more space than it needed to. so one day as i was browsing around ebay for pedals i came across a seller who offered a tap pedal that would occupy a much smaller footprint – it was $20 so i snatched it up. little knobless red box below.
this tap-tempo served me well too, but it didn’t last very long. the casing was a rigid plastic, but not rigid enough to have the weight of a foot concentrated on the switch. the switch itself was fairly cheap too – just a standard plastic momentary switch that probably wasn’t menat for repeated tapping by one’s foot. over time i think the switch started to register inaccurate tempos from my foot. ok, so it had to go.
at some point i realized that every component of that little tap pedal (which weren’t that many) was available at radio shack. the parts include: the housing for the switch, the switch itself, a 1/4″ input jack and some wires. although i didn’t have much faith in the plastic housing i realized that the radioshack package also came with a metal plate that would go on top of the box. with this, i thought the weight of my foot would at least be distributed evenly across the surface of the box.
long story short, i bought up all the parts i needed to make a new one. after about 40 minutes of drilling and soldering, i was able to put together what you see below (knobless silver box). this version had the metal plate for added strength.
worked great and looked great. no issues with the structural integrity of the housing. but sure enough, after some time, that radio shack switch started to crap out on me just like the last one – started registering some dumb tempos. couldn’t have that!
fast-forward to today.
i installed a quality metal momentary switch i found on ebay. and before screwing in the 4 screws, i decided to do some decorating with some reflective tape i had lying around. below, you’ll see the results of my hard work :) this one should last me a while without any issues.