Marshall DSL owners... (past and present)

[kannibul]

The guitarist in my band bought one used, but his has a broken footswitch cable.

One curiousity though, is that it's a two button footswitch that he says has a Tip, two rings, and a sleeve.

Is this correct for this amp?

 

[1big1]

the footswitch for mine is a an unbalanced quarter inch jack for channel switching. it also has an led to let you know when you're switched to the ultra gain channel. i bought mine used so i have no idea what stock was. i use a footswitch from a marshall g50 for the reverb. it is also a single quarter inch jack.. but no led. i wouldn't see why a double switch couldn't be substituted.. as long as it had a pair of quarter inch jacks it should work.. but i'm not a tech.. so i could be wrong.

 

[PeteLaramee]

The guitarist in my band bought one used, but his has a broken footswitch cable.

One curiousity though, is that it's a two button footswitch that he says has a Tip, two rings, and a sleeve.

Is this correct for this amp?

Does he have a combo? The combos (or at least some) can switch between modes within the channels. They use those jacks.

 

[1big1]

the footswitch for mine is a an unbalanced quarter inch jack for channel switching. it also has an led to let you know when you're switched to the ultra gain channel. i bought mine used so i have no idea what stock was. i use a footswitch from a marshall g50 for the reverb. it is also a single quarter inch jack.. but no led. i wouldn't see why a double switch couldn't be substituted.. as long as it had a pair of quarter inch jacks it should work.. but i'm not a tech.. so i could be wrong.

Well that's true. If you have one footswitch box with two buttons and two cables coming out to the amp, that would work. But that's really the same thing as two footswitches.

You can't use a single footswitch with two buttons and a single stereo cable. Well, maybe you can, but only one of the buttons would do anything.

true on both counts. i was just thinking that thier could be issues because of the led in the footswitch.. but i'm not a tech.. so i'm not sure about that. i'm assuming that the power to light the led would be coming from the amp. not sure what effect that would have on a non-led switch.. or if it could cause other problems down the road.

 

[1big1]

the tsl takes a "special" footswitch with a din plug. i checked into one for a tsl 60 that a friend of mine has. he bought it used and it didn't come with a footswitch. i priced one for him at a local store and the manager said they run about 180 usd.

 

[kannibul]

The guitarist in my band bought one used, but his has a broken footswitch cable.

One curiousity though, is that it's a two button footswitch that he says has a Tip, two rings, and a sleeve.

Is this correct for this amp?

Does he have a combo? The combos (or at least some) can switch between modes within the channels. They use those jacks.

It's the DSL 100 head

 

[PeteLaramee]

The guitarist in my band bought one used, but his has a broken footswitch cable.

One curiousity though, is that it's a two button footswitch that he says has a Tip, two rings, and a sleeve.

Is this correct for this amp?

Does he have a combo? The combos (or at least some) can switch between modes within the channels. They use those jacks.

It's the DSL 100 head

I've played a DSL head every day for 3 years and I just use a standard 1/4" into my TC Gmajor to switch the channels. A stereo plug is not needed.

 

[kannibul]

You guys mentioning the unbalanced plug/jack coincides with what I remember of it too - so it seems he's got the wrong footswitch.

Sadly, he can be a bit hard-headed when it comes to this stuff. He was thinking the switch would also switch the modes of the amp, which I know isn't true (without modding, even then, there's only two people that I think could mod the amp that way - Trace @ Voodoo, and JerryP) - and he started getting mad at me over it.

 

[PeteLaramee]

You guys mentioning the unbalanced plug/jack coincides with what I remember of it too - so it seems he's got the wrong footswitch.

Sadly, he can be a bit hard-headed when it comes to this stuff. He was thinking the switch would also switch the modes of the amp, which I know isn't true (without modding, even then, there's only two people that I think could mod the amp that way - Trace @ Voodoo, and JerryP) - and he started getting mad at me over it.

My DSL head has the deluxe voodoo mod and it doesn't switch between modes. I don't think Trace offers that mod. I was hoping to find some local schmo to do that for me, but no luck so far.

 

[1big1]

i would think a standard quarter inch unbalanced switch would work.
it works with mine and it's a dsl 100.
you are correct that the channel modes cannot be switched without modding the amp. all you can do is push a button on the front of the amp to go from clean to crunch. there's a noticable drop in volume when you go from crunch to clean.. btw.. which is why i usually use the crunch channel and roll the volume back on the guitar to clean it up a bit.
also.. you cannot switch from lead one to lead two on the ultra channel without pushing a button on the front of the amp.. unless of course it's been modded.
i'm not sure if someone mods them to switch between modes or not. i thought i read somewhere that you'd have to install relays and make some other tweaks in order to be able to do that.
anyway.. i usually use just the crunch channel with a boost for leads. but that's just me. ymmv.

 

[messenger]

Couldn't you use a Y adapter to connect the dual footswitch to both the channel jack, and the reverb? jack?

 

[1big1]

i know what you're thinking. maybe it would work? haven't had the need to try that. you're thinking trs "in" to two quarter inch unbalanced "out" if we're on the same page.

 

[kannibul]

Couldn't you use a Y adapter to connect the dual footswitch to both the channel jack, and the reverb? jack?

Probably - except if the jacks are the isolated type (non-grounded) - then that might cause a problem.

 

[1big1]

the polarity of some of the two button trs switches can also vary.. so the button that says "effects" winds up switching the channel instead.. and vice versa. the two button switch for my peavey special is opposite the polarity of the one i use on my laney aor. the reason i'm bringing that up is because unfortunately one size does not fit all. if a trs to two quarter inch jacks works it would just be a matter of swapping them around if the polarity is wrong.

 

[Plexihacker]

The DSL has two separate mono jacks on the rear; one for reverb and one for channel switching. For the two button foorswitches with a single stereo cable you need to get a stereo female to dual male mono 1/4 inch jack "Y" adapter. Then it'll work.

If you want to find out which jack is which, use a DMM and turn each footswitch on/off. Or, plug both in and you have a 50/50 chance of plugging it in right.