The AshBass Single Bank-Down Switch Mod I

The most common critisism of the otherwise terrrific AX1500G and AX1000G is that you have to press two buttons to move down in the list of program banks. Here is a fairly simple mod you can make to your KORG pedal which gives you one new button that works like pressing the two buttons for Bank-Down. This mod works for me and I make no guarantees that it will work for anyone else. Use it at your own risk.

Click here for a better solution. The solution below uses two mini-buttons that have to be pushed at the same time to get bank down. While this *does* work ( I used it this way for some time), you still get an occaisional miss just like with the two regular buttons. The link above shows my second --and perfect-- fix.

  1. PARTS: You'll need a screwdriver, a drill, a soldering iron, some solder, and ideally a double pole single throw momentary switch. Unfortunately, this switch isn't readily available so I opted for using two single pole single throw switches from RadioShack for about $3.
    Click here to see the mod *with* the correct switch.
  1. Open your pedal by taking out the six screws on the bottom. Remove the bottom cover and put it off to one side.
  1. Locate the two sets of solder-points that are used by the bank-switching buttons.
  1. Solder four separate wires to the circuit board as shown. The color of the wires you use doesn't matter as long as you can keep track of where the wires are connected to the circuit board.
  1. Solder the other ends of the four wires to the terminals of your two momentary switches. Again, the ideal situation would be to have only one switch with two sets of terminals (double pole), but we make do with what's available.
  1. Mark on the pedal where you will be drilling holes for the two switches. Drill the holes.
  1. Put the switches in their holes and secure them. You could stop here but I found that getting the two buttons pressed at roughly the same time wasn't easy. So, I sanded down a magic marker cap and glued it to the tops of the two switches. This helped and looked better as well.
  1. The end.
    I found that putting the head of a large screw on the button helped distribute the force of pressing better.


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