Boss Slow Gear

[sfr]

I started building the Slow Gear from the plans General Guitar Gadgets website (just need to order the transistors now!  oops! [and damn, those pads for the transistors are small]) Anyway, I'm not incredibly familiar with this pedal as is, so I was reading up reviews of it, and it seems like the footswitch (which I believe is the "cancel" in the schematic) should be a momentary switch, from the sounds of the descriptions of the original pedal that I've read.  Can anyone confirm or deny this for me?  I'm sure this is one of those embarrasing things that will make sense to me when I wake up tomorrow and I'll feel silly for asking.

Thanks, folks.

[Rodgre]

My slow gear is NOT momentary. On is on and off is off. When it's on, it's basically a noise gate with a very slow attack time.

Roger

[Mark Hammer]

From what I gather, the Slow Gear exploits the traditional flip-flop circuit that Boss uses for switching in a clever way.

In some/most respects, yes, the SG *is* basically a slow noise gate with a longer than average turn-on time.  It's gating action is determined chiefly by the SK30 FET, which acts as a variable resistor and attenuates the signal on command.  The slow rise time is a product of it being directed to "unattenuate".

Of course, as a FET it can be directed to change effective resistance VERY quickly.  So, what Boss did was use the same momentary footswitch and discrete flip-flop circuit to either:
a) make the SK30 resistance to ground become very high very quickly (flip-flop state A), thus removing all attenuation and essentially any audible effect, or
b) make the SK30 resistance very low (flip-flop state B) but able to increase via the control voltage coming from the envelope detector/generator.

In effect, the FET resistance is *always* being determined by the joint effect of the envelope follower AND flip-flop.  It's justthat in the one flip-flop state, the envelope follower can have no audible impact above and beyond what the flip-flop is doing.

So, in sum, although the *effect* remains on until otherwise requested, and is not momentary (i.e., only those notes where you step down), the footswitch used to do that IS momentary.

Make sense?

[Rodgre]

by the same token, I used to have a DOD Swell pedal (one of maybe five pedals I've sold in my lifetime....) which used a momentary switch. You had to step on it with every note to activate it. You could use it to do backward swells, or to swell from unity to LOUDER for a solo boost. Always momentary though.

Weird pedal...

Roger