Hd500, Asterisk Appears And Volume Lowers When Any Footswitch Is Disengaged And Then Re Engaged

[goodguy191]

It seems on my POD HD500, whenever I press a footswitch to turn off a certain effect for example, an asterisk* appears.  When I press it again to turn that footswitch back on, I noticed the volume's not as loud as it was before I touched it.  I have to quickly change to a different preset, and then back for it to be normal again.  This happens with every preset I've tried, whether it's a factory preset or one of my own.  I play in a church band and the sudden change in volume is killer when I'm engaging or disengaging an effect mid song.  Any solutions?

[Rewolf48]

It is possible that you are getting a bit of chatter on the sensors behind the knobs for the amp settings - and obviously I suspect the Volume. This is something that can affect some people.

 

Basically you press a foot switch and tiny movement around the knobs are detected and registered as changes to the patch. If the Volume knob is significantly below the volume saved on the Patch the volume goes down; conversely if it is higher the volume will go up.

 

You can easily test this by triggering the problem and looking at where the active knob settings are relative to the saved settings (which appear as small dots when you have the Amp settings displayed).

 

The "solution" is to park the knobs at one or other extreme position where there is minimal scope for movement.  Not a great solution, but I never turn those knobs while playing live anyway so it doesn't matter where they are pointing.

[phil_m]

The asterisk appearing is per design. Whenever you switch and effect on or off within a preset, the preset has been altered from its saved stated, so the asterisk will appear.

 

As far as the volume thing, that's pretty weird. The suggestion above regarding the volume knobs moving could be a possibility, but it seems unlikely to me given that what you're experiencing seems to be so consistent. I really don't know what could be causing what you're experiencing. I can see a change in volume because of effects being turned on or off, but things should go back when you hit the switch again. I guess the first thing I would try is reinstalling the firmware and doing the global settings reset.

[goodguy191]

I moved all the volume and tone knobs around a bit now.  I haven't used them in a while except the master volume knob.  I've been doing all my changes through the desktop software for about the last 6 weeks.  I can't notice the problem anymore, maybe that was the issue.  I didn't notice the problem until I was playing live on sunday, and after re engaging a footswtich, it was hard to hear myself because I was next to the drummer.  I know to be careful to not touch the tone/EQ knobs on stage because it will temporarily change the saved settings.  It kept on happening throughout the worship service, and up until yesterday it was still happening.  It seems to be fine now.  I may end up temporarily taping the knobs at 0 next time I'm on stage, and see if the problem reoccurs.  

 

Thanks for your input guys.

 

And when you say re installing the firmware, do you mean the flash memory through the monkey software?

[phil_m]

If the volume drop issue is actually more sporadic, than knob jitter could very well be the problem. I'd try parking the knobs and see if that helps. You shouldn't have to resort to taping them, though. If you park them at the max position, it takes a little more movement for them to actually start changing parameters than it does if they're just somewhere in the middle.

 

And, yes, by reinstalling the firmware I was meaning re-doing the update through Monkey. But I would only do that if parking the knobs didn't work.

[goodguy191]

ok thanks