Let's review footswitches.

Do you prefer a hard click, or a soft click?

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    73
The LMS are custom stamped Gorvas and have been from the beginning

https://www.facebook.com/102661514489325/posts/400417261380414

Manufacturers make different levels of product for different levels of customers, depending on the customer’s specifications. One example, LG makes displays for everyone from Monoprice to Apple, but Apple is willing to pay more for higher-end product with tighter QC.

Dailywell may indeed be the manufacturer of the Gorva switch (I bet, like most industries, there are probably really only 2-3 choices (them and Alpha I guess?) if you want thousands of your product made consistently), but the design itself is still from Gorva (like the first post, Gorva did post a lot during the development process of the switch to social media) and they’re likely more tightly QC’d than most of Dailywell’s other customers.

https://www.facebook.com/102661514489325/posts/318553322900142

https://www.facebook.com/102661514489325/posts/344152693673538

https://www.facebook.com/102661514489325/posts/347792276642913

I personally love the @StompBoxParts blue-epoxy 3PDTs, and their green-body-with-blue-epoxy before that. The click is satisfying while not being hard, and the epoxy takes heat like a *champ*. And of course, no white washer :)

(The red epoxy is equally great, I just don’t like heavy clicks)

@Stickman393 Any chance you can get a hold of the old Mammoth Pro 3PDT to compare? It had a green body and a softer click (sound familiar?), Gorva name-checked it a lot when developing their footswitch as the standard that they wanted to meet/exceed, and I’m pretty sure SBP’s green-body-with-blue-epoxy had a similar design goal.
 
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Stickman393 said:
I mean, the LMS was available long before GORVA. IIRC their switches are relative newcomers to the market.

I'd be surprised if there's any difference between them.

In terms of force required to make em click, I suppose one could rig up a vise and put 'em head to head, slowly cranking them together until one makes.

Do that a few hundred times with randomly selected samples across multiple production runs and you may have an answer re: which one require less force to actuate.

For my money, the real stand-outs in the budget realm are the stompboxparts red and blue epoxy switches. @$3 a pop, these things are killers.

Blues are an easier tap than the LMS/GORVA. Similar build too, only difference is a small plastic tab that extends beyond the metal plate on the LMS/GORVA switches.

Reds give alpha a run for their money, solid and smooth heavy click.

I'm gonna collect more.

As to: what do we prefer...perhaps a poll is in order...

Looks like one option has pulled ahead to a stunning and unexpected lead:

View attachment 22601
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There are now two imposter stickmen
 
@manfesto I don't have any access to the old ones, unless the SBP blue b-stock are the same...

Not outside the realm of possibility, certainly, seeing as how SBP bought up all of the old mammoth stuff.

Re: different levels of quality and QC: this is very much true, though I can't help but wonder how much got changed on the inside.

Contact resistance for all three is <30 milliohms, all three are rated for 30k cycles, similar insulation resistance and dielectric strength.

The biggest difference appears to be the force required to actuate, @1kgf vs 3kgf. Even the tolerance for that value seems to be around the same from a percentage standpoint...

But...I'm no expert on switch design and manufacturing. Pretty damn far from it, actually.

If I seem ambivalent, it's because I am. Because it seems like everything in the world of audio needs to be viewed through a skeptical lens, cause them snake oil salesmen be...like...everywhere.
 
fig said:
Sorry what? I was searching for GØRVA SPST Soft Clicks. :ROFLMAO:
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Lemmie know when ya find one. I wanna do a head to head shootout with the demont.

We will find the best momentary if we have to bend the space-time continuum to do so.

I have more:

The alphas have some distinguishing characteristics...but these are the most noticable.

See those raised letters on the bottom? No? Well, good I marked em.

IMG_20220208_152427__01.jpg
 
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Stickman393 said:
@manfesto I don't have any access to the old ones, unless the SBP blue b-stock are the same...

Not outside the realm of possibility, certainly, seeing as how SBP bought up all of the old mammoth stuff.
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Dang, when I bought the last of the clearanced Mammoth greens from SBP I *knew* I should’ve held onto one, for history’s sake.

Stickman393 said:
Re: different levels of quality and QC: this is very much true, though I can't help but wonder how much got changed on the inside.

Contact resistance for all three is <30 milliohms, all three are rated for 30k cycles, similar insulation resistance and dielectric strength.

The biggest difference appears to be the force required to actuate, @1kgf vs 3kgf. Even the tolerance for that value seems to be around the same from a percentage standpoint...

But...I'm no expert on switch design and manufacturing. Pretty damn far from it, actually.

If I seem ambivalent, it's because I am. Because it seems like everything in the world of audio needs to be viewed through a skeptical lens, cause them snake oil salesmen be...like...everywhere.
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In general I agree (a not-insignificant amount of my professional history has involved cost optimization, which is like 75% sniffing out snake oil salesmen and 25% finding the most reputable Chinese vendor with the best QC-to-cost ratio) and if I weren’t (weirdly) familiar with the story of the Gorva footswitch I’d certainly be more suspicious.

One bit of evidence that speaks to custom design of the Gorva is that, at the time it came out (I bought a few to test), the PedalPCB 3PDT breakout board didn’t fit (it’s since been redesigned with wider universal holes), the holes weren’t quite aligned with the Gorva but still fit perfectly on China blues that probably came from the same factory. This was, frankly, *super* annoying at the time - I’d just assumed the Gorva was a 3PDT that was spec’d with low actuation force and tight QC, not something that was fundamentally different in size and shape from its competition, to the point that near-universal things like breakout boards didn’t even fit. I don’t know the design reason for the lug spacing to be *slightly* different than other 3PDTs, but the fact that it’s there means that Dailywell didn’t make them on the same line as their other products (not saying better or worse, just saying different)
 
Absolutely fascinating insight on the pin spacing @manfesto. Definitely thought of the gorva switch as just a spec’d out product until reading that.
 
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finebyfine said:
Absolutely fascinating insight on the pin spacing @manfesto. Definitely thought of the gorva switch as just a spec’d out product until reading that.
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I actually found my OG post about it (post #5 in this thread), and turns out I misremembered earlier and the first few batches of Gorvas that LMS sold weren’t custom stamped yet!

Gorva 3pdt Soft Click

Just came across these: Gorva 3PDT Soft Click Switches I was wondering if anyone has used them? I assume they are not as silent as using a relay and momentary switch, but wanted to know how if there were as good as These from Lovemyswitches which are way more expensive. Thanks!
forum.pedalpcb.com forum.pedalpcb.com
 
Well let's crack 'em open!

Left to right: Alpha, Tayda (1.1kg version), Vimex, Gorva, Dailywell

IMG_6471.jpg
Probably not super useful without details pics, but construction of Alpha and Tayda is similar but without a doubt different. Tayda has a softer casing, and the spring is has less tension, giving it the lighter click.

Vimex is nice, doesn't have the PCB corners that the rest of the switches have. Vimex, dailywell, and gorva have the thickest plastic casing (by only a little), making the casing feel a bit sturdier.

Gorva/Dailywell appear to have identical tooling with a few aesthetic differences that do not indicate that they are different manufacturer: green casing and doesn't have the dailywell stamp on the top metal piece with the clasps. Gorva obviously has a lighter spring. The internal rocker and contacts (which are visually different than the other three) look identical.

Internal rocker pieces and plungers are very similar amongst all of them despite different colors.

Someone else will have to do @fig's hammer test, I think these have seen enough.
 
rmfx said:
Gorva/Dailywell appear to have identical tooling with a few aesthetic differences that do not indicate that they are different manufacturer: green casing and doesn't have the dailywell stamp on the top metal piece with the clasps. Gorva obviously has a lighter spring. The internal rocker and contacts (which are visually different than the other three) look identical.
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I wonder if, after making Gorva's switches, Dailywell switched the rest of their line over to use the same tooling. The only way to check would be to have a Dailywell switch from like 2019 to compare the build, and I'm assuming nobody has any laying around.

I had the same thought when, after SBP started offering its switch in two levels of actuation force (35oz and 75oz), it seemed within a few weeks *suddenly* Tayda started making two $2.30 switches, one with an actuation force of 1.1Kg (pretty close to 35oz) and one with an actuation force of 2.0Kg (pretty close to 75oz).
 
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Big ol thanks to @rmfx for their sacrifice!

I'm gonna start off by looking at the bottom of the barrel momentary switch, the Daier that can be had for under 2 bucks.

Please excuse stickman. He has a taste for the finer things in life, and thus is unable to see when something cheap is perfectly serviceable. He is also pretty jaded and curmudgeonly. He is also me.

IMG_20220210_111236__01.jpg

Crack 'er open!!!






IMG_20220210_111721_copy_1944x2592.jpg

Representational art is not stickman's forte. IMG_20220210_113208__01_copy_1760x2347.jpg
Stickman's handwriting is also pretty abysmal. He would like to tell anybody who points that out to eat a bag of dicks. Like I said, he grumpy.

Honestly, after opening this thing up, it's certainly serviceable as a momentary control. The contacts are beefy, the mechanism is simple enough.

If I was to judge with a critical eye: the one area that strikes me as a potential failure point is the plunger.

See, that black bit on the bottom of the plunger is plastic. Depending on the exact polymer used, that could range anywhere from "no big deal" to "brittle town, population: this thing".

Over time, after being exposed to multiple thousands of stomps, I imagine that would be the first bit to go. Either that, or the copper rivets that hold the assembly together would loosen and eventually fall out.

But...on the plus side, it's got one of the lightest springs out of the bunch, and I wouldn't think twice about throwing one of these in a pedal that wasn't meant to be stomped to hell.
 
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