Mesa DC3 footswitch

[Foorever]

I got a DC3 without a footswitch. I haven't tried anything yet, but I was wondering if a regular 1/4 footswitch from something else would work with it? Would it hurt to try?

I didn't want to try if it could harm it.

 

[Monsta-Tone]

Some of the DC amps have tricky footswitch circuits.

If you have a really early one, you might have to call Mesa.

You could try to get an original on Ebay, or get one from Mesa, but that is a bit expensive.



Here is what I did:

www.tubesandmore.com

P-H470 is the footswitch with 1 button

P-H471 is the footswitch with 2 buttons

P-H471-LED is a 2 button with LED


I had a DC-5 with LED's on the faceplate of the amp and the P-H471-LED worked just fine. The LED for the channel select worked great, but the EQ LED did not work.

The way to tell if you need a 1 button or a 2 button footswitch is to look at the back of the amp where the Reverb footswitch jack is.

If it only says Reverb, then you need the 2 button for the front jack. This would control the channel select & the EQ.

If it says Reverb & EQ, then you need a 1 button footswitch for the front jack, and a 2 button for the rear if you want to be able to switch the EQ in and out.




Now, here is the tricky part....
If you happen to have the Revision A version of the DC-3, you may need to add a 330k ohm resistor in series with the LED inside the footswitch. I had an older DC-2 that I had to build a footswitch for, and it ended up needing the resistors.


Hope this helps.

 

[Foorever]

Thanks for the info. I guess all I really need right now is channel switching.

I'm guessing you can't tell me really, but what's the chances of this pedal working?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120198211910&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123


Like I said before, would it hurt anything to try that in the footswitch jack?

 

[Monsta-Tone]

It won't hurt anything. If you need the resistor, it won't work right.

If it doesn't work right, remove it and don't use it, or you might drain the switching power supply too much.

If it does work and your EQ is switched from the same jack, your EQ will simply be on all the time.

 

[Foorever]

It won't hurt anything. If you need the resistor, it won't work right.

If it doesn't work right, remove it and don't use it, or you might drain the switching power supply too much.

If it does work and your EQ is switched from the same jack, your EQ will simply be on all the time.

Can you maybe tell by looking at these? I don't see a reverb/eq footswitch jack on the back of any DC3. Maybe I'm not looking. Mine should be here in a few days. Here's the pics

I'm getting this footswitch for free in a trade.. So I figured I'd just try, hoping that it switches channels

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120198211910&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123