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Me and a couple friends were talking pedal's the other day at a benefit show we were all playing and had a brilliant idea..... set and forget tamper proof knobs, basically knobs designed like a medicine cap bottle, where you have to physically press down on the knob to turn it other wise the knob just spins. That way if your playing live and you have a packed pedal board you can't accidentally hit a knob with your foot and change your settings the knob would just spin and the actual setting would be saved. Do such things exsist or does anyone think this would be a product that would interest people? I was thinking of looking into producing numerous different designs, mainly orange knob style in large and small, plus more common knob styles.

Only simmilar idea I can think of is all Hardwire pedals come with a Rubber Pot Cover to prevent you knocking them.

Nice idea though with the medicine cap version.

The only problem with pot cover's is that every pedal is different, there would have to be a thousand different models to cover all your pedals, but making the knobs makes them universal for any and all pedals and can be added as an upgrade to anything you currently own. I just need to find a manufacturer who will design and make these bad boys for me, considering i'd probably ahve to make orders of atleast a few hundred of each knob i'm trying to judge interest before i really look into doing this.

could be realized with push/pull pots? like if you pull out the pot, set it like you want it- and push it back in.. you could turn as much as you want- it wouldn't change the sound.
drawback: push/pull pots are expensive and if you pull out the pot on another setting than you pushed it in, the sound changes immediately.

Ancient Astronaught wrote:The only problem with pot cover's is that every pedal is different, there would have to be a thousand different models to cover all your pedals, but making the knobs makes them universal for any and all pedals and can be added as an upgrade to anything you currently own. I just need to find a manufacturer who will design and make these bad boys for me, considering i'd probably ahve to make orders of atleast a few hundred of each knob i'm trying to judge interest before i really look into doing this.

Plus at present... you'd have to buy a Hardwire pedal to get one, I was just mentioning it as an idea that has alread come out, so perhaps there is a market for such a thing if they developed it.

I don't think production would be cheap, given the costs of a new mould and having it designed, look at the current knobs on offer through places such as smallbear, atleast around $1 a piece and that's in bulk purchase from an established mould and design.

What you could do as smallbear has had stuff made specially for them in the past is perhaps get in contact with them or I know the Tone God from DIYStompboxes recently had a batch of plexi glass bottom plates for pedals designed and see if they wanted to collaborate on the idea, might release you from some financial and logistical burden.

But yes I think there's always a market for new knobs and your idea would probably go down well with a lot of people, although you'd have to design the knobs so that people actually wanted them on there pedals of course.

Some others will probably have some better input, i'll just say I like the idea but it doesn't sound as easy as it might at first to realise.

Schlatte wrote:could be realized with push/pull pots? like if you pull out the pot, set it like you want it- and push it back in.. you could turn as much as you want- it wouldn't change the sound.
drawback: push/pull pots are expensive and if you pull out the pot on another setting than you pushed it in, the sound changes immediately.

And that requires changing an actual pot with soldering, not just the knob which would cut his market down to purely DIYers and removes some of the universability of the knob idea as certain pots are different in certain pedals.

^true words.. but for a quick and already existing solution (especially if you build it yourself) it would probably work fine...

plus push pull pots means an actualy modification to the pedal and its components, the reason we liked the knob idea is it would be a super easy upgrade, have absolutely no affect on the tone of the pedal and be relatively cheap. If i can get the knobs at a sell price of like 2 to 3 dollars your looking at 10 dollars at most to upgrade all the knobs on a single pedal, (certain hi knob count pedals excluded of course) which IMO is a worth while investment if you play out alot. Plus if i can get actual manufacturers interested in purchasing them maybe soon pedals could come with them installed during the manufacturing process.

What you could do as smallbear has had stuff made specially for them in the past is perhaps get in contact with them or I know the Tone God from DIYStompboxes recently had a batch of plexi glass bottom plates for pedals designed and see if they wanted to collaborate on the idea, might release you from some financial and logistical burden.

But yes I think there's always a market for new knobs and your idea would probably go down well with a lot of people, although you'd have to design the knobs so that people actually wanted them on there pedals of course.

That's a great idea, thanks my friend! As far as cosmetic's i of course would want to have atleast a few different styles that would appeal to a larger audience, such as simple black plastic knobs, chicken head knobs, orange style large and small, simple black top hats, etc. If i do match up with a supplier I can easily ask them for a report of their top 5 or 10 selling knobs and use those as a base for the deisgns i choose to release to inscrease the chance of success of this idea.

i would buy them.

Well i found one of the suppliers for small bear that makes custom knobs, i am going to contact them with my idea to see if they will be able to fulfill my idea. So what i ask of you guys is what knob design's would you guys be interested in?

Chickenhead, standard round knobs.. maybe some mxr style ones.

I'm thinking that once i get in touch and hear back from the moulding company i will set up a poll to see what knobs people would like the most. Depending on cost i will probably start with 5 designs and branch out from there if the demand is there. I'm going to start a list of peoples suggestions for the poll, starting with schlattes mentions above.

That cheap ibanez series of pedals with the tone-lok knobs?

Rygot wrote:That cheap ibanez series of pedals with the tone-lok knobs?

no those are push to recess knobs, the one's im thinking would pop on like normal knobs to normal splined shafts found on most pedals.

So you want just a new knob design that would only spin the shaft when pressed down, hmmmmm

I am sure it is possible and if it existed I would buy them for strats as well because I am always dialing down volume while I play.

The problem from how I see it is that you want the knob to grip the shaft when depressed and not grip it when upright but there would be some mechanical issues with actually keeping it on the pedal

What I do with strats is put a little tape under the pot on the pickguard so there is some resistance that keeps knobs from turning easily, and easier Idea would be do put an extra knob cover over the knobs in question that only turned the knob when sqeezed.