Nord User Forum

Here's the switch I tried. It's just a passive, dual button switch with TRS out.

You said the static discharge possibility is compatible with the environment of your current practicing room. Can you tell us more about this? Have there been other instances of such problems? Also, can you describe what you did exactly (where the pedal was, which end of the cable you plugged first, etc.) when the problem showed up the first times?

It's scary to think that it takes as little as plugging a pedal to fry the main board. By the way, if that's really what happened, it's almost a miracle that the only thing that stopped working is the prog pedal input (at least, from your earlier posts I piece together that your S3 still works normally, apart from that).

I feel your frustration...

This looks like a MOSKY on Amazon with the following info:
【Applications】It works for BeatBuddy, Boss DD7,EHX Canyon, EHX Oceans, Marshall delay pedal, Line 6 HX Stomp, Nux Loop Core. It will NOT work for GT-1 Multi-effects Pedal and Boss rc 3 looper pedal.
【Easy to Work】With two momentary footswitch and 6.35mm output jack. Just connect by 6.35mm stereo patch cable, and it will work.
【Please Note】It cannot switch channels.

WannitBBBad wrote:This looks like a MOSKY on Amazon with the following info:
【Applications】It works for BeatBuddy, Boss DD7,EHX Canyon, EHX Oceans, Marshall delay pedal, Line 6 HX Stomp, Nux Loop Core. It will NOT work for GT-1 Multi-effects Pedal and Boss rc 3 looper pedal.
【Easy to Work】With two momentary footswitch and 6.35mm output jack. Just connect by 6.35mm stereo patch cable, and it will work.
【Please Note】It cannot switch channels.

This is correct. To answer the previous questions and clarify, unfortunately the pedal jack was not the only problem that came up after this. When I came home, I wrote to Nord's USA support, AMS, who advised me to back up my sounds and settings and do a factory restore. The backup went fine, but when I tried to apply the factory file to the NS3, I was unable to write the files to the sample partition. I got the error

Download failed: CReqFileWrite failed: File Write Error (9)

I tried to reformat and delete all my samples, but it still did it over and over. I stepped away for a while, reformatted, and tried to load my backup and, to my surprise, it went perfectly last night! What a relief. It still makes me uneasy. However I did try to load a new sample after my backup and it loaded with no problem.

Here's what happened: I was holding the pedal in my left hand, and holding the plug in my right. The band space we are using is having problems with static zaps because it's our bassist's house and he runs his dehumidifier a lot, plus our weather has suddenly gotten much warmer and dryer. I was wearing shoes on carpet. I didn't hear or feel a zap, but as soon as I plugged it into my NS3 (which was powered on) the entire panel flashed every single light and then went completely dark. I reset the NS3 and it seemed to work okay after. I tried the pedal, and nothing. I tried a different cable, and this time it made the NS3 freeze, so I reset it again. I thought the pedal was defective (and I believe it very well might be, since I could not get it working consistently with another keyboard) but I also couldn't get program change to work with my damper pedal when I tested it.

My theory, based on some thoughts from our drummer, who is an Electrical Engineer, is that a static zap caused a power surge that corrupted the filesystem on the Nord and blew up an EMI filter capacitor on the input jack. I can try and put a multimeter on it, but when everything else seems to be functioning properly now it seems like it should be unnecessary to swap out an entire new mainboard.

I am glad you were able to reflash it and got back working again - albeit with no prog pedal. I hope you'll sort that out too. Regarding the dynamics of what happened:

Fallboard wrote: Here's what happened: I was holding the pedal in my left hand, and holding the plug in my right. The band space we are using is having problems with static zaps because it's our bassist's house and he runs his dehumidifier a lot, plus our weather has suddenly gotten much warmer and dryer. I was wearing shoes on carpet. I didn't hear or feel a zap, but as soon as I plugged it into my NS3 (which was powered on) the entire panel flashed every single light and then went completely dark. I reset the NS3 and it seemed to work okay after. I tried the pedal, and nothing. I tried a different cable, and this time it made the NS3 freeze, so I reset it again. I thought the pedal was defective (and I believe it very well might be, since I could not get it working consistently with another keyboard) but I also couldn't get program change to work with my damper pedal when I tested it.

My theory, based on some thoughts from our drummer, who is an Electrical Engineer, is that a static zap caused a power surge that corrupted the filesystem on the Nord and blew up an EMI filter capacitor on the input jack. I can try and put a multimeter on it, but when everything else seems to be functioning properly now it seems like it should be unnecessary to swap out an entire new mainboard.

I am not a guru in this kind of stuff but to me you didn't do anything wrong. The chance of getting a static electricity "zap" under one's finger indeed increases dramatically in this season in Italy too, until proper summer kicks in, then it decreases again. I get them quite a lot but it doesn't matter which kind of shoes I am wearing on which kind of soil. I get them both getting off my car (shoes on concrete) and touching things in my house (socks only on tiles). Whether it's possible for an object to be charged with some static electricity even after it has been touched (and no zap has been felt), is something that I don't really know.

Overall I still think what happened to you is very uncommon for the scenario you described. Otherwise we would be seeing broken electronic devices all the time. One last thing: which kind of stand were you using for the Stage 3? I use an iron stand on a wood floor. Again, not sure if any of this matters...

One thing is for sure: that sentence on the description "Just connect by 6.35mm stereo patch cable, and it will work.", sounds in retrospection like a bad omen!

it’s highly unlikely that static electricity would cause actual damage, the outside ring/barrel of the connector is ground and is the first thing in contact with any plug pushed into the connector. Static discharge would occur at this ground location, not on the internal jack inputs connected to the circuit boards.

as for plugging in the peddles with the power on or off, it doesn’t make any difference. a static discharge would occur in either case and if its going to damage the input circuit, it would do so regardless of the power on/off condition.

cgrafx wrote:it’s highly unlikely that static electricity would cause actual damage, the outside ring/barrel of the connector is ground and is the first thing in contact with any plug pushed into the connector. Static discharge would occur at this ground location, not on the internal jack inputs connected to the circuit boards.

as for plugging in the peddles with the power on or off, it doesn’t make any difference. a static discharge would occur in either case and if its going to damage the input circuit, it would do so regardless of the power on/off condition.

If I was holding the grounded case of the pedal with my left hand and plugged the pedal in with my right and sent a static discharge through the ground of the jack, it would have gone right through the filter capacitor.

The stand I'm using has foam plastic pads I tied on to insulate the metal of the stand from scratching the bottom of the NS3. My friend, who is far more experienced with electronics and has an ESR meter for testing capacitors without removing them offered to take a look at it next week. Otherwise I will try and schedule a service appointment. Without technical schematics, I don't know which one of the filter caps connect to the jack off hand, but it would be pretty easy to guess. If one tests bad, it's obvious what happened. If not, then I'm definitely going to leave it to the hands of a professional. I really hope I don't need a new mainboard. Worst case scenario, but at least I can put that in myself.