{"id":442,"date":"2017-01-07T16:29:38","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T21:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/wordpress\/?p=442"},"modified":"2022-07-25T10:49:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:49:37","slug":"roland-vk8m-modification-add-jack-for-rotary-speed-footswitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/?p=442","title":{"rendered":"Roland VK8M Modification &#8211; Add Jack for Rotary Speed Footswitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a few years of owning the Roland VK8M I finally got around to adding a jack for a footswitch. It&#8217;s very convenient to have both hand free to play the keyboard but still be able to change the rotary speaker speed with a footswitch. I have no idea why this wasn&#8217;t in the original design but I have wanted to do this since I got it, so here it is!<\/p>\n<p>This is how it starts out.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794797860\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/415\/31794797860_9ef987b831_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"459\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>There really isn&#8217;t a lot of room on the back to add a jack, definitely not enough to add a full quarter inch jack so I decided to do it with a 1\/8th jack instead.<\/p>\n<p>The first step is (after opening it up!) to drill the hole.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794798510\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/268\/31794798510_3bc52bd801_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"522\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I had to drill from the inside out so there was a lot of metal around the hole afterwards. Unfortunately I scrapped the back a bit while cleaning off the excess burr but not a big deal!<\/p>\n<p>The solder points on the pot board are, of course, directly underneath the front panel switch so I just soldered the 2 wires onto them.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794798980\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/578\/31794798980_5011f56af5_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"458\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Then solder the other ends of the wires onto the new jack and mount it in the hole<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794799200\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/441\/31794799200_cbc6533409_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"498\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This is a very simple mod overall but I did have one big problem: It didn&#8217;t work! It took a bit of testing to determine that as long as the jack was touching ground (the case) it was messing with the logic of the switching and not only didn&#8217;t work but disabled the front panel switch as well.<\/p>\n<p>So to solve that problem the last step was to insulate around the jack on both sides of the case with some duct tape. I wrapped a tiny sliver around the jack threads as well so there was no chance of it touching the case at all. <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794799630\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/528\/31794799630_82cdee0a66_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"452\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The only slight mod I needed to do was to the actual footswitch, The extra one I had was configured to be Normally Closed but what I needed was a normally open momentary switch. Again, a very simple mod. It started out like this:<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794800070\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/352\/31794800070_c9f9b0d8c1_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"472\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>And after a bit of resoldering ended up like this:<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/31794800420\/in\/photostream\/\" title=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/591\/31794800420_f1eb7f9426_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"482\" alt=\"Roland VK8M Mod - Add Footswitch Jack\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>And that was it. Now I can change the Leslie speed with the footswitch, which makes it a little more fun to play in my opinion! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a few years of owning the Roland VK8M I finally got around to adding a jack for a footswitch. It&#8217;s very convenient to have both hand free to play the keyboard but still be able to change the rotary speaker speed with a footswitch. I have no idea why this wasn&#8217;t in the original &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}