How to unlock a Combination?

DeanoCalgary · Post by **DeanoCalgary** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:44 pm

Hi, It's pedal guy here, thanks for the posts, and it sounds as though this information is valuable enough that it has to be repeated from time to time.

Problem Goes Away
When I got home last night, I booted Oasys, and adjusted nothing. And my 3 non-Korg pedals all worked fine, as they have done for a week or so. M-Audio damper, Yamaha Volume pedal, and a Behringer volume pedal in the footswitch socket (I like to have my leslie activation on a volume-style pedal). The Oasys was fine all night, no hung notes, no locked combis.

Question: Mr. Sharp, Mr Dan; Does it make sense to you this is a polarity problem if the symptom is not present at all times? Can a polarity problem show up just once in a while? As an electrical matter I would have thought it would be always present until fixed?

Regards, Dean.

Post by **Sharp** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:15 pm

When I got home last night, I booted Oasys, and adjusted nothing. And my 3 non-Korg pedals all worked fine, as they have done for a week or so. M-Audio damper, Yamaha Volume pedal, and a Behringer volume pedal in the footswitch socket (I like to have my leslie activation on a volume-style pedal). The Oasys was fine all night, no hung notes, no locked combis.

Yes this is as expected but it does not solve your problem. It will happen again.

Question: Mr. Sharp, Mr Dan; Does it make sense to you this is a polarity problem if the symptom is not present at all times? Can a polarity problem show up just once in a while? As an electrical matter I would have thought it would be always present until fixed?

Yes, if you read my last reply to Dan I explain the only two known situations where this problem can occur and that it's something that will happen at random when these conditions are meet.

It will not happen every time, but it will happen again at some point. The only way I know to totally prevent it is to rewire your non KORG pedals to the KORG way, and flip the polarity back to the default KORG setting in Global mode.

Or buy a KORG pedal.

Regards
Sharp

danatkorg · Post by **danatkorg** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 9:11 pm

With relation to on-off switches (see the note at the end re half-damper pedals), "Polarity" may not mean what folks would expect. These switches work by completing ("closing") or breaking ("opening") an electric connection, similar to a light switch. When the light switch is closed, the light comes on; when the light switch is opened, the light goes off.

What Korg calls "Negative" (the Korg standard) means that when the pedal is not held down, the switch is open; when you step on the pedal, the switch is closed. This is also referred to as "normally-open."

What Korg calls "Positive" (as used by Yamaha, for example) is the opposite: the switch is closed when the pedal is up, and open when the pedal is down.

The advantage of a normally-open pedal is that, if the pedal is disconnected, the electrical result is the same as the pedal being up; notes will not suddenly start to sustain. The same is true if the cable has been damaged such that a connection is intermittent (bad solder connection etc.).

With a normally-closed pedal, on the other hand, removing the cable is electrically the same as holding the pedal down. So, if you pull the cable, notes will sustain. This would also happen with an intermittent cable.

My guess is that this is the source of people having problems with normally-closed pedals. If the pedal is pulled out (or partially pulled out, enough to break the connection), or if the cable is damaged, then notes will sustain.

Note that swapping the tip/sleeve connections of the cable will not change the polarity of the switch. It will still work the same way. However, swapping them would mean re-doing the connections, which might fix a problem with a bad solder joint etc.

Side point re half-damper pedals:

Half-damper pedals are slightly more complex than standard switches, since they use a variable resitor to give continuous position values instead of simply on/off. I just talked about this with a hardware engineer, and he mentioned that for half-dampers, swapping the tip/sleeve connections in the wire would (unlike switches!) reverse the normal state from open to closed.

Post by **Sharp** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:35 pm

Hi Dan.

I just got verification on this from a friend who works as a repair technician. He told me that there are 3 types of damper pedals and that 2 of them can be reversed.

The first one which can't be reversed is the simple Open or Closed one you mentioned, but he said that he hasn't seen one of those in years. He said they don't make them any more because it's just easier to manufacture one switch that works both ways than two switches, one for each way.

The second he said is the simple open or closed connection once again only this time it has 3 prongs that allow you to reverse the default state. He said to wire the pedal to work as default for a KORG you place the positive wire on prong 1 and the negative on prong two. If you want to wire the pedal for a Yamaha you leave the negative on prong 2 but you have to move the positive to prong 3. This is a very common type of pedal he said.

The third type of pedal is the one that has half damper abilites. He said that they use Photometers in these not resisters and that the wiring is exactly the same as the mentioned above for pedal type 2. KORG use prongs 1 and 2, where Yamaha use 2 and 3.

So for both type 2 and 3 all you have to do move the outside wire to the opposite outside prong and that this does reverse the polarity.

He's going to email over a photo of a KORG damper pedals photometer to show me. When I get it I'll post it online.

Regards
Sharp.

Post by **Sharp** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:59 pm

Here's that photo.

Dan, I think your explanation as to the cause makes a word of sense, so chances are then that dean is not using a type 3 pedal (going my explanation of the different types), he's more likely using either type 1 or 2 as they are the only types that sned open and closed signals. The Type 3 / Photometer would work on voltage.

Cool.... this could prove very handy in future to help people out. Although I say in my time I've sold quite a few Damper Pedals for KORG by recommending them to anyone who has had this problem

Regards
Sharp.

danatkorg · Post by **danatkorg** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 11:26 pm

Hi Sharp,

The third type of pedal is the one that has half damper abilites. He said that they use Photometers in these not resisters

Perhaps there is a confusion between a potentiometer (which is a variable resistor, as used in Korg half-damper pedals) and a photometer (which would be used in an optical volume pedal - but not Korg half-dampers).

- Dan

Post by **Sharp** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 12:06 am

Doh... thanks for the correction on that. That's the one.
My spell checker changed what I was saying to "Photo Meters" on top of me typing in the wrong word in the first place.

My typing has gone to the dogs lately. I'll have to slow down.

Regards
Sharp.

Kevin Nolan · Post by **Kevin Nolan** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 1:42 am

Fair dues to Dan for shedding light on the Photometer issue

(Sorry couldn't resist)!

Kevin.

Bad I know - I'll understand a ban !!

MartinHines · Post by **MartinHines** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 2:12 am

Sharp wrote:

Yes that's correct.
OASYS, M3, Triton Series, they all experience the same intermittent problem.

There are two situations that can cause this.

1: It can happen to people who use non korg pedals that require the polarity to be flipped off the default setting.

2: It can happen to anyone who doesn't even have a damper pedal connected at all but have the polarity of the damper in Global mode flipped off the default KORG setting.

Regards
Sharp

Sharp,

I don't think this is correct.

In every situation I can remember when people had Triton "freezes" due to damper pedal polarity problems, the problem WAS corrected simply by changing/reversing the Damper Pedal polarity in Global settings, then saving the change (so the changed polarity will correctly set on the next power up).

Sharp wrote: My typing has gone to the dogs lately..

Sharp,
It has been my experience that dogs really don't use pedals. They have enough trouble just playing the keys without having to worry about also using a pedal.

Post by **Sharp** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 2:37 am

Kevin Nolan wrote:Fair dues to Dan for shedding light on the Photometer issue

(Sorry couldn't resist)!

Kevin.

Bad I know - I'll understand a ban !!

Yeah, rub it in why don't ya. You won't be laughing when I patent the idea and build the worlds first optical Damper Pedal and become a multi millionaire.

:3drofl:

Post by **Sharp** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 2:52 am

Hi Martin.

Sharp,

I don't think this is correct.

In every situation I can remember when people had Triton "freezes" due to damper pedal polarity problems, the problem WAS corrected simply by changing/reversing the Damper Pedal polarity in Global settings, then saving the change (so the changed polarity will correctly set on the next power up)

I'm not sure what you are saying Martain, can you please expand on this.
To the best of my knowledge the problem only occurs under the two conditions I mentioned in my previous post. The only solution I know about is you either rewire your non-KORG pedal and flip the polarity so it will function on the default KORG setting, or you buy a real KORG pedal.

Sharp,
It has been my experience that dogs really don't use pedals. They have enough trouble just playing the keys without having to worry about also using a pedal.

I don't know mate, I've seen some pretty crazy stuff on YouTube lately.

Regards
Sharp.

danatkorg · Post by **danatkorg** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 4:29 am

Sharp wrote: The only solution I know about is you either rewire your non-KORG pedal and flip the polarity so it will function on the default KORG setting, or you buy a real KORG pedal.

As noted above, it seems likely that hung notes encountered with normally-closed switches would be due to either pulling out the plug, or a damaged cable. (This assumes that the Global parameter is set and saved correctly, as Martin mentions.) I've been using Yamaha pedals (opposite polarity from Korg) with various OASYS units for many years without incident, so it seems unlikely to me that there is an endemic problem.

- Dan

MartinHines · Post by **MartinHines** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:03 pm

Sharp wrote:Hi Martin.

[I'm not sure what you are saying Martain, can you please expand on this.
To the best of my knowledge the problem only occurs under the two conditions I mentioned in my previous post. The only solution I know about is you either rewire your non-KORG pedal and flip the polarity so it will function on the default KORG setting, or you buy a real KORG pedal.

Regards
Sharp.

Sharp,

I am saying the same thing Dan is saying.

One should be able to use non-Korg pedals on a Triton/Oasys without having to make any physical modifications to the pedals themselves.

In every situation I have seen on forums where people are using non-Korg pedals, they were able to completely fix the problem by changing the "Damper Pedal Polarity" setting on the keyboard, in Global Settings.

Post by **Sharp** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 1:58 am

Hi Martain.

I am saying the same thing Dan is saying.

I don't see this, Dan is not saying that at all. His explanation is sound and rock solid.

One should be able to use non-Korg pedals on a Triton/Oasys without having to make any physical modifications to the pedals themselves.

I know that, but history has proven that if you do use a non KORG pedal people do turn up on the forums asking for help as to why all of a sudden they can't change tracks.

I have yet to hear anyone with a KORG pedal have any issues. The cause is likely for all the reasons Dan mentioned too.

In every situation I have seen on forums where people are using non-Korg pedals, they were able to completely fix the problem by changing the "Damper Pedal Polarity" setting on the keyboard, in Global Settings.

Sorry mate but that's not right. If someone has the polarity set wrong then the keyboard will not function correctly 100% of the time. It's a random even Martain, not a 100% repeatable event.

Never has been.

Regards
Sharp

zolhof · Post by **zolhof** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:22 pm

Sharp wrote:
I have yet to hear anyone with a KORG pedal have any issues.

I do have!

I have a PS-1 Footswitch which randomly skips more than 1 program/combi (usually 2 prog skips, rarelly 3). I tried reversing polarity on the global menu and nothing. I lost count of how many times I was sabotaged by the pedal skipping to the wrong patch, really annoying lol

I've been using the same pedal with a Kurz PC3X for 3+ months and it works FLAWLESSLY!

Last week my brother gave me a non-branded footswitch he bought for 15 bucks and wasn't using anymore. Here's a pic:

Looks and feels very cheap. Anyway, I spent almost 2 hours changing programs/combis with this pedal and it didn't skip more than it was supposed to not even once! And it's been like that the whole week

I even tried the PS-1 again but it failed after 3 minutes. Go figure...