Contacting Voodoo Lab - Faulty GCP Pedal

[Nanco]

Hi there,

I emailed Voodoo Lab about a month ago regarding a faulty GCP. Besides getting the automated “email received” response, I have yet to hear from them. I can appreciate that a lot of companies are extremely busy what with the current state of the world, but I thought I’d better post on the forum and query this in case anyone knows anything. Can anyone confirm if the guys at Voodoo lab are just busy or dealing with some kind of backlog? I’ve noticed that the forum seems to be much quieter in recent months too.

I’ll include my original message to Voodoo Lab below in case anyone can offer some help in the meantime, however I do suspect that my GCP is faulty as I obtained a brand new one recently that didnt exhibit the same issue.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you can help me. I own a Ground Control Pro that has been a part of my live guitar rig for over 10 years now. Sadly, the live rig had to be stored away for a few years and I’ve only recently managed to put it to good use again.

That said, I’ve noticed an intermittent issue with the pedal that I’ve honestly been having a hard time trying to fathom out especially considering the pedal was working last time I used it and literally nothing has been changed (the pedal is mounted to a board along with my other pedals and is always plugged in with the exception of the power cable. It has been stored safely in a heavy duty flight case). I’ll try my best to explain the general idea of whats going on:

• The pedal generally “works” (ie it powers on, the display lights up, and all footswitches/menus/presets function fine).
• The pedal is usually powered via the GCX rack unit, however I have been testing the pedal using the 9v wall wart plug too to help rule out any additional problems. The fault persists regardless of how the pedal is being powered.
• I have been testing just the GCP with and without expression pedals connected. There are no other things plugged into the GCP as to rule out interference from any other devices.
• When powering up the pedal, I sometimes notice some very slight flickering on the LED display that may stop if you turn the pedal off & on again multiple times. Despite this, the pedal continues to function “correctly”.

With that said, there is a notable issue that becomes obvious when expression pedals are plugged in:

1. The two pedals I am using are Mission Engineering EP-1 expression pedals. They are each connected to the two GCP pedal inputs via a regular stereo jack cable and were functioning fine the last time I used my rig a few years ago.
2. Each pedal exhibits the full 0-127 range according to the GCP display.
3. Sometimes (more often than not), the GCP displays the lowest value as 1 and the highest as 126. The latter value sometimes flickers between 126 & 127 rapidly.
4. If the above point happens, unplugging the cable/s at the GCP end defaults the expression pedal/s value to “001” when it should technically read as “000” as nothing is plugged in.
5. Sometimes, the full range sweep stutters quite considerably (as if its changing up gears). This seems to happen when the “flickering” is occuring on the display.
6. The problems occur when both expression pedals are plugged in or if a single expression pedal is plugged in. Swapping the cables/pedals around makes no difference either.
7. I have tested the expression pedals separately on some of my other gear and I can confirm that there are zero issues with using them (no calibration issues and no intermittent readings as with the GCP)
8. I have tested at least 6 different stereo cables (including two brand new ones that I purchased to rule out potentially faulty cables) and the results are the same regardless.
9. Restoring the GCP to factory default settings hasnt made any difference.

Even though the expression pedal behaviour is what made things more apparent to me that there was a fault, I’m not entirely convinced that the problem is with that part of the GCP specifically (especially when you consider the flickering on the display, which can occur without anything being plugged into the GCP other than the power supply). I have taken the pedal apart and in all honesty, I cannot see any evidence of failed or burnt out components. The inside of the pedal is immaculate.

Whilst this may or may not be related, I did actually have issues in the past when having two expression pedals plugged in simultaneously one would affect the other. I originally dealt with John Clark regarding this enquiry, however it seems my original post on the forum has long since been deleted. All I remember is that I had to ship my GCP to you for a modification, which ultimately fixed the problem. Considering the pedal has been working fine up until recently having been taken out of storage, I’m not even sure if my past enquiry is even relevant this time.

Do you have any suggestions as to what the problem might be? Is there anything else I could do that might help to troubleshooting the problem? If I need to arrange for the pedal to be sent in for repair, is there anywhere I can send it locally (I’m from the UK) or will I need to ship it directly to Voodoo Lab?

Kind regards,
Matt

[Nanco]

In addition to the above post, the new GCP that I obtained exhibits the original problem I had when connecting two expression pedals simultaneously to pedal 1 & 2 inputs on the back of the GCP. To clarify:

• Plugging either pedal into input 1 or 2 works completely fine (full 0-127 range with no stuttering. Its a very clean sweep).
• Plugging both pedals in simultaneously changes the range of both pedals to 0-125.

Like I said, I did discuss this particular issue with John Clark when my original GCP was brand new. I shipped it out to Voodoo Lab and they kindly sorted this issue for me, so I would assume the same thing would need to be done with the new GCP I acquired recently. It would be interesting to learn what the actual issue is here (I no longer have any transcripts of the original discussion sadly - did you guys update the forum or something a while back?)

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help with this matter. I am also experiencing some issues with my GCX too, however as this post is already quite long and I’m not entirely sure if the two issues are related, I’ll make a separate post about that shortly.

Kind regards,
Matt