BMI Volume Pedal Question

[Marc Weller]

Group,

I recently purchased a second hand BMI volume pedal with a tone control. When I fully depress the pedal I only get about 75 percent of max volume and the tone pot doesn't seem to have any effect
whatsoever. It doesn't seem to matter which way I connect it to my amp (front jack to amp, rear to guitar, or vise versa). Any ideas how to fix this thing? Is it possible that the capacitor is shot? Since I don't have any literature, I don't even know how to contact BMI.

MW

[Brad Bechtel]

I'm moving this topic to the Electronics forum.

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Brad's Page of Steel:
www.well.com/~wellvis/steel.html
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars

[Jon Light (deceased)]

Hey Mark--I'll take you through this as if your pedal is identical to mine.

The BMI is a bit crude compared to the Goodrich but it does the job just fine. Since getting a Goodrich the BMI is my backup. My bet is that the volume pot isn't opening all the way. Here's where the BMI is crude--the only way to adjust it is to release the screw in the front that holds down the string and release the string tension around the rubber coated pot stem. Do this with the pedal in the down position (or mark the pot postion when the pedal is fully on. Now with the string tension off I'll bet that you can turn the pot a bit more. So open it up all the way, wrap the string again and tie it down with the screw. Now see if you can back the volume all the way off. If not then you will have to find the compromise that best suits you--from 10% on to 90% on, or whatever.
What you call a tone control is actually an adjustment to the taper of the volume pot--a variable impedance control. It does in fact affect tone a bit and it affects how much of the volume control occurs during how much or how little portion of the pedal throw.
That was a mangled sentence but I'm too tired to correct it.

Hope this applies to the pedal you have and I hope it helps.

[Marc Weller]

Jon,

Thanks for the info. I'll give it a try.

MW