Top Mounted Jack Socket Problems?

Brad

In a bit of a strange pickle here...

Has anyone ever had any issues with pedals that have top mounted jack sockets and the sound cutting out?

It's happening on two different pedals. At first I thought it was the patch cable (Evidence Audio SIS). Even though the SIS stuff have never given me any grief, I tried a soldered patch cable with Hicon ends with the same result. There is plenty of slack to the next pedal, nothing is being pulled too tightly or twisted. Happens at home and on gigs.

However, today when playing both pedals individually straight to amp with my instrument leads (trying both straight and right angle Neutrik connectors), everything is fine. I couldn't replicate the problem at all. This is at home volume mind, gig situation might be different...

What I noticed is that the Neutrik connecters where nice snug, sitting flush with the socket, however both the Hicon and SIS slightly eased out a bit, although nowhere near enough to disconnect from the pedal.

Any ideas?  

eaudio

Hi Brad,

To some extent no two brands of plugs or jacks are the same in shape and measurements. As a "standard" goes, the 1/4" phone plug system is very slopply. It's even (if not especially) true within the same brand of jack sockets that use these springs:




What you're after is a resonable contact shown on the left. That's about as flush as it gets. It can look flush on the outside of the pedal and still not be making "ideal" contact where it counts. I wouldn't worry if a plug seats "away from" the pedal by a small margin on the outside.

The springs are rarely in the same position and wherever they are today might change down the road. The plugs? Brands will vary some by some small measure at the distance from the most concave portion of the tip to the base of the shaft. This leads to rare but inevitable cases of incompatibility. I've seen my plugs fit perfect on the input side of a common pedal, but not so perfect on the output side. Same pedal! Hard to know what to point a finger at... but how the plug looks (visually flush or not) from the outside of the pedal is rarely an indicator of how good the contact is.

What IS a great indicator is sound. The fact your sound is cutting out with the Hicon and SIS says that something is going on for sure. If you are up for it I'd open the pedals and look to see what is going on inside. How does it look compared to the photo above? There is a chance it will be obvious and you could bend the spring to a better position for whatever plug you decide to use. (If not mine, I'll buy those back from you).

It's hard to imagine it has anything to do with the jack sockets being top mounted. I bet instead these are just a brand of jack that don't get along will with certain brands of plugs. Or they just had a production run where things were just outside what they usually are, and it shows up in rare cases with just a few plugs.


BR,
Tony
evidence audio