1) The biggest impediment to the success of the series was really the weight and size of the docks. When you consider the plethora of lightweight 1590A-sized pedals out there (and I saw this morning that Menatone has pretty well ported their entire line over to the "mini" form-factor, and MXR has released a Bluebox derivative in mini form), who is going to stick a 5lb pedal on their board? That Achilles heel aside, the idea was VERY clever for its time. In particular, the idea that two standardized docks (mono and stereo) could be built and serve for the entire line of effects, provided tremendous convenience from a manufacturer's perspective. Why they chose to go with such a heavy and costly chassis is anybody's guess.
2) I swear by Stabilant 22 as a way of keeping contacts alive. I have resurrected the contacts on well-used TV remotes, Nintendo cartridges, and SIM-card connectors with the stuff. As I am fond of repeating, in the land of electrons, one micron may as well be the Grand Canyon. Stabilant forms a viscous electroconductive "web" between edge connectors and sockets, and what plugs into them.
3) The footswitches were an elegant idea, packing two functions into one treadle. The mechanism used height-staggered microswitches, that allowed light presses to do one thing (generally tap-tempo or other secondary functions), and hard-click presses to do bypass/engagement. The "click" came from a flexible concave disk that would give when pressed hard enough, and then snap back into place when the treadle was released. I will note one exception that I encountered. One of the docks that Jeorge Tripps sent me was very reluctant to work. Knowing that I had other docks I could use in case I buggered this one up, I took it apart completely, and discovered that during construction two discs had stuck to each other, by virtue of the thin oil coating, such that it would not bend. I separated them, re-installed one of them, and the pedal came back to life, with full switching restored.
