Nord User Forum

I have a crap pedal, it´s a copy of the Yamaha FC5. While "mostly" working with sustain, with the rotary it does the same like you describe. While using a "real" FC5, no problems at all. The switching is not precise, ON and OFF with the cheap one in fact does ONOFFONOFFONNNNNNNNNN in fractures of a second, and that is what happens. When you open it up you can see why. The Yamaha has a serious contact with copperplating, the cheap one just stiff wires that are pressed together.
My oldest FC5 is something like 30years old now. Still works flawlessly, besides cleaning every 3-5years, no issues. Recommended. The only shitty thing about the Yamahas is that stupid negative polarity. Today most instruments can detect that automatically (the stage3 does it), but years back I had to rewire one because a Korg did not want that.

I have two FC5 which worked fine for years.
I also made a pedal long time ago with a microswitch and that still works OK. Maybe you can exchange the contact with one of those microswitches.
Actually I modified it and now it is a kind of 'double pedal', momentary, with an additional latch switch.
nord-stage-forum-f3/latch-pedal-t6520.html#p41375

I got a brand new Yamaha FC4A today, and everything works perfectly. Funny thing is that I've had this problem with a lot of different sustain pedals, so I didn't think that was the issue. They're all pretty beat up and old though. Guess contact bounce is just something that happens to sustain pedals after a fair bit of use.

Appreciate all the super-helpful replies!!

Yup, I've had this issue too on both of my NS3's (compact and 88). The problem was worst with the Nord sustain pedal. I've had better luck with either Roland or Yamaha FC4. In fact, both have worked quite well for me without any problems.

I've got the same problem, though my setup uses a dedicated rotor pedal. I've tried brand new Yamaha FC4 and FC5 pedals, and a Kurzweil pedals all having the same problem. I've also switched them back and forth with the pedal plugged into the sustain jack. Every pedal plugged into the sustain jacks works just fine, but they all have the same problem, in the rotor jack.

One thing I did find is that by changing the setting so the speed toggles to fast when I press and hold the rotor pedal, and then returns to chorale mode when I take my foot off the pedal everything works fine. I get no "mis-fires" from the pedal. This leads me to believe the problem is with my Nord Stage 3 Compact rather than the various pedals I've tried.

From these reports, it looks like the problem is very hit-and-miss. I always used the included Nord sustain pedal (which is a standard Fatar VFP1) without any problem, except for a very brief period (a couple of weeks) when the leslie speed flickered as you describe, but then the problem just disappeared. I imagine there was some dirt in the contacts that went away by itself.
I also used a 20-years old Kawai pedal with no issues. Sometimes I have problems with small plastic switches like the Yamaha FC5, Boss FS5 etc, but I'm not sure if it's because of the dodgy contacts or simply because the switch moves around so much that I'm not able to control it properly.
Anyway, I never had a pedal consistently fail so much that I could unambiguously consider it malfunctioning.

Kaffimusic wrote: The only shitty thing about the Yamahas is that stupid negative polarity. Today most instruments can detect that automatically (the stage3 does it), but years back I had to rewire one because a Korg did not want that.

You’ve got that backwards.

The Korgs have that Shitty polarity. If you want to use a pedal with anything other than a Korg or a Kurzweil, including all Rolands, Yamahas, Casios, and all manner of vintage synths, IIRC, you’ll need to reverse it.

Echt jetzt? Okay, so you see how much I have been socialized in the Korg universe, stayed too long and gave it up some 20 years ago... But the Kurzweils I have (K2, PC3, PC3k) do not care for polarity. They check it while booting up and adapt.
But... as far as I remember fiddling around with the pedal switches, I believe "no sustain" was contact open and "hold it" was contact closed in the Korg. In the very beginning I had a very cheap pedal where this was clearly to identify. While I guess the Yamaha was vice versa, which I understand as "turned around". This old pedal did not work in my first Yamaha then (SY77) so I was forced to buy my first Yamaha Fswitch. And well, I am not quite sure, but I believe for some time I also owned a Roland D70, which also did not work with the Yamaha, but the old pedal. But that is so long ago... I just remember sticking the Yamaha pedal in some other instruments, and the notes start to hang.
Was wrong over all those years?

analogika wrote:
The Korgs have that Shitty polarity. If you want to use a pedal with anything other than a Korg or a Kurzweil, including all Rolands, Yamahas, Casios, and all manner of vintage synths, IIRC, you’ll need to reverse it.

A toggle switch has no polarity, it is either open(NO) or closed (NC). Switching polarity has no meaning on the switch itself.

Valpurgis wrote:A toggle switch has no polarity, it is either open(NO) or closed (NC). Switching polarity has no meaning on the switch itself.

Which is totally true: Electrically, it's a passive element - has a resistance, but not a polarity in the sense of (-) and (+). Nevertheless, musicians talk of "pedal polarity" if they mean open-idle and closed-idle types. And some can even be switched between normal-open (NO) and normal-closed (NC).