One of today’s jobs – along side child-proofing some shelving – was to assemble a remote foot-switch for my Boss RC-1 loop recorder pedal that I use for practice. The RC-1 is a useful tool, but I do find the overloaded foot-switch commands to start, stop, undo, etc, confusing and hard to remember which can be an impediment during practice.

The pedal has an input for a remote foot-switch that simplifies the operation dramatically, and Boss want you to shell out a good chunk of change for their official foot switch. The official foot-switch has a couple of extra features (switching from momentary to latching, and indicator LEDs) that might be useful with other pedals, but are unnecessary for the RC-1. The actual requirements are very simple: it’s really just two momentary switches connected to a TRS socket. I followed a plan on Instructables.

I deviated from the Instructables plans in a couple of places: I couldn’t find the exact parts in a couple of places so had to select near equivalents, I installed the hardware into the enclosure before I started soldering (there’s a lot of room in the enclosure so it is easy to do), and (because the hardware was already installed) I used significantly shorter lengths of wire to connect all the parts. The barrel on the jack socket I bought was a little deeper than the case, so a random O-ring from the workbench supplies was needed as a spacer.

I ordered the parts from Mammoth in the US as I couldn’t find the momentary switches locally¹. I’m sure they are available, but my google-fu was insufficient. Mammoth also do the nicely powder coated enclosures too so that was a bonus, and somewhat offset the international shipping. Oddly the two switches came with a different complement of washers; no idea what that is about.

1. If anyone knows of a good suppler in New Zealand I would love to hear about it. Since I ordered the parts I did discover an Australian parts supplier, Pedal Parts Australia, who may be useful for future projects.