Getting the Boss FV-50L to have a more linear sweep.

[stevehollx]

The pot on this pedal is pretty linear, but there is a dead section in the top and bottom of the pedal, which for volume isn't a big deal, but throws me of on the sweep of the wah. I can't overcome it with a custom envelope taper on the modifier either.

From research, it looks like all the Boss units have this. I'm looking for ways to correct it. I feel like I read something on here a while back about people discussing this.

Does anyone know if it is a product of the pot in the pedal? Would swapping it out for a linear 10k alpha pot alleviate this? Do alpha pots fit in this pedal?

 

[666was999]

Hi there!
Have you ever tried a Boss EV-5? It has already a 10k pot (lin or log, I don't know?) inside,
wich is much better for expression use than a 50k.
There is also a slider on one side to set the min value, wich is important to set the start of the range. Don't know it's value (50k?) and how it is wired.
I set min to 0.5 and to me there is no dead spot at any end and it's all linear.
Bernd

 

[GM Arts]

I use the Boss 500L (using the 10K LIN control pot connection) - it has a big dead area under the heel and a small one under the toe. This is a hardware issue so it needs a hardware solution: put some chocks under the pedal ends (maybe a wood shim or an eraser cut to size) so you only sweep the pedal over its usable range.

fwiw, I think it's important to have a small dead area to guarantee that the pedal extremes always return the same resistance values. I built my own MIDI controller and I've designed it to auto-calibrate the pedal with a 3% dead area at extremes.