# Uhh, is my sustain pedal supposed to do this?



## Snarf (Apr 15, 2020)

Everytime I lift (and occasionally when I press down) the sustain pedal does this. I don't recall it ever doing this before. I checked Studio One's midi log and it shows up there as well. Very quick on-off signals. I've tried to troubleshoot this problem online but I couldn't find anything. Does anyone of you know what might be wrong? (or know the right troubleshooting terms?)


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## cuttime (Apr 15, 2020)

I'd say you have a dirty contact in the pedal. If you can get to the contacts, I'd use some cleaner on it. If not, you probably need a new pedal.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 15, 2020)

My first thought was a MIDI loop so you get double messages, but that wouldn't be intermittent or only MIDI CC 64.

That leaves the pedal, and I don't know how its momentary contact switch works mechanically. Do you have a VOM that you could use to test it for continuity? That will tell you whether it's simply worn out.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 15, 2020)

Yeah, that was my second thought - what cuttime says.

If you don't have a can of contact cleaner, you'll probably need it sooner than later anyway.


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## Snarf (Apr 15, 2020)

Thank you for the replies, people!

Perhaps I should have mentioned I have an M-Audio SP-2 pedal. They are pretty cheap. 

I'm sorry, I don't know what VOM stands for, and no clue about 'a can of contact cleaner' either :/
Could you expand on that @Nick Batzdorf?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 15, 2020)

Volt Ohm Meter. They're also called multimeters, and a $20 - $30 one should last years. VOMs are useful for checking everything from continuity (i.e. whether a cable is bad) to batteries to voltages and many other things.

For example: https://www.radioshack.com/products/rs-pro-rs-12-compact-digital-multimeter

Contact cleaner:




For this one repair it would be cheaper just to replace the sustain pedal (if that's the problem), but a VOM and some contact cleaner is worth picking up at some point if you're working with music toys.


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## AmbientMile (Apr 15, 2020)

I agree that a multimeter is a great thing to have. But in this case it might be hard to properly troubleshoot. It appears that the spikes are very short and an inexpensive multimeter might not have a fast enough reaction time to see them.


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## cuttime (Apr 15, 2020)

I think the SP-2 has a sealed rubberized switch. You won't be able to clean it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 15, 2020)

AmbientMile said:


> I agree that a multimeter is a great thing to have. But in this case it might be hard to properly troubleshoot. It appears that the spikes are very short and an inexpensive multimeter might not have a fast enough reaction time to see them.



True. On mine you'd hear the tone repeat (assuming it's > 50mS), but that is a good point.


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## rgames (Apr 15, 2020)

Yeah it looks like there's something that's closing and opening the switch really quickly. That's usually a bad connection somewhere. Could be the mechanism but it could also be in the cable. I'm not familiar with that unit but it might be easier to check the cable than the pedal. if you can find the contacts within the pedal then see if there's any fraying there. You might have tripped on the cable at some point and yanked it and damaged it (yep, I'm guilty of that one).

rgames


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## Snarf (Apr 16, 2020)

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for all the advice, people!

So I picked it up, blew some dust away and now it's only 1/20 times that it does that :D
The cable is indeed not-detachable, and yeah, I might have to buy a new one unfortunately.


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