At a recent jam session, keyboardist Jon Rudolph’s setup caught my eye. Jon was running his Moog Voyager through a Boss RC-3 looper pedal, but had removed the spring-loaded footswitch plate so he could keep the pedal next to his keyboard and press the button with his finger.
Inspired by the sounds he was getting, I bought an EHX 720 stereo looper, which has a 1/4-inch TRS jack for a remote triple footswitch. Two of the switches increment or decrement the loop bank, and the third alternately deletes or restores the last overdub. Using the schematic in the 720 manual, I wired up this fingertip remote control.
[From my "Key Secrets" column in Keyboard magazine]
UPDATE, 2020-01-10: I've been using a Boss Tera Echo pedal in a desktop system. It has tap-on and tap-off, along with a mode that freezes the sound when you hold down the switch. I was just about to remove the plate and spring to make it easier to sustain with a finger. Then I discovered I could simply bend the spring sideways to lower the tension. Now it's easy to hold down the switch and I still have a nice big target to hit.
