Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

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stiiiiiiive
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Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by stiiiiiiive » Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:08 am

Dear Phatty lovers,

Several months ago (shame on me), I may have found out a work around to this common problem on discontinued instruments, discussed many times here: dancing LEDs. Maybe someone else uses it but I cannot record having read that, so I share it.



How to know when it happens:

In some occasions, the LEDs around the potentiometers of Little/Slim Phatty will move by themselves, causing the sound to change accordingly.

Several users here have testified (see these search results), here is my own experience.

My Little Phatty does this when switched on and for +/- the time it warms up. Then, things get quieter (that being said, I've found an example of Slim doing it only when warmed up). It will never do it at home nor in my usual rehearsal studios, but in places I've never been, making recording sessions and gigs a bit more stressful that what they should be :)
I once had the problem in a usual rehearsal studio and solved it by plugin the LP to a different wall plug than my 2-3 effect pedals.
I once had the problem during the set up of a two night recording session; as I was worrying, the second day, I brought a Slim I had been using at home without any problem so far... and its LEDs danced too in the recording studio. Cursed!

That tends to corroborate the hypothesis of the problem being due to local electrical facility specificity and/or current quality variations.



Why it is annoying:

Well, the effect is just like if the potentiometer was physically moved.

Consequently, the parameter value actually changes, so does the sound.
Plus it makes program save operation risky as you end saving a different value than the one you've just set.

It is interesting to note that -if I remember correctly- only the parameter the potentiometer is currently controlling will be affected.
For example: if the FILTER section pot is controlling the cut off frequency, you can definitely see the LEDs moving and the sound being filtered accordingly. However, the resonance will not be affected... until you select it to control its value with the pot.
So it's like if the pot itself suffered narcolepsy (rather than epilepsy...) and the controlled parameter just could do anything but following it - as usual.

That means that this problem will not affect all sound parameters but a maximum of 4 of them. That's kind of a good news! Well, it was to me, at least... because it allows to use a tip I'll describe below.



What I was used to do:

First off, I breathe, cross fingers and leave the Phatty switched on as long as possible before using it. So far, I never had the problem during the actual show or recording session.

Then, there is this tip: as only the controlled parameters are affected, and as the active parameter of each section is memorized in the program, you can save your programs with the pot currently controlling a unused MIDI #CC through pot mapping. This is kind of tedious because 1- you may want to load a program with the immediate access to the relevant parameters and 2- you cannot do that on the spot where the problem is occurring: when it's occurring, it's to late for saving programs.

A good idea could be to save all the programs you use in a librarian and to build copies of the relevant ones with this particular pot mapping just for special occasions; read: bring those with you when you go to new places and make sure you can send them into your Phatty in emergency.



Now, what I've discovered:

Sweeping the potentiometer a couple of times on the whole range seems to help stabilizing the parameter value. I say parameter value and not potentiometer behaviour because -once again- the problem occurs only on the parameter what is being controlled by the pot. Hence the tip above.

So I do this several times before the gig or recording.




Hope this will be useful to some of you guys.


Others tags for searching this topic: LED collar collars lights light ghost zombie alone epileptic

kn_s
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by kn_s » Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:06 pm

as a fellow lp user, admittedly not as much as i should be (thanks non-moog eurocrack), thank you for the heads up! i had noticed this a little bit when i was using my end of the run lp solar edition more regularly, but i admit i have wandered away from my lp and will refer back to this in the future!
LP solar, minitaur, m32, werkstatt, 101/102/103/104m/105m/107/108m,cp-251,mf delay v1&2+drivev2, microkorg, monologue, volcas, monotribe & trons, sq-1, too many pedals!, guitars, '07 imac (10.11.6), simmons sds7, & now eurocrack, etc...

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_DemonDan_
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by _DemonDan_ » Mon Aug 10, 2020 12:59 pm

stiiiiiiive wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:08 amOn some occasions, the LEDs around the potentiometers of Little/Slim Phatty will move by themselves, causing the sound to change accordingly.
This may not be your particular situation, but it may help in troubleshooting.

My Little Phatty's knobs would zombie scroll when I had certain 9v AC->DC FX pedal adapters on the same AC circuit *and* in the audio path coming from my LP.

The proof that it was being caused by certain 9v adapters is that the knobs stopped moving the instant I pulled the adapter from the FX pedal, leaving it to run on its internal 9v battery.

The proof that it's caused in the audio path is that I could keep the FX's adapter plugged into the same AC and FX pedal but, but removing the FX from the audio out path between the LP and the amp again stopped the unwanted scrolling.

Edit: I also got zombie scrolling when the LP was connected to a JamHub and nothing else. Again, removing the AC->DC power supply stopped the scrolling.
_ :twisted: _DemonDan_ :twisted: _

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stiiiiiiive
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by stiiiiiiive » Tue Aug 18, 2020 11:02 am

Indeed Dan.
I could not remember exactly so I wrote that:
stiiiiiiive wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:08 am I once had the problem in a usual rehearsal studio and solved it by plugin the LP to a different wall plug than my 2-3 effect pedals.
... but I remember trying something with the FX pedal out of the audio chain too and it solved the problem. For the record (hu huu) it was a Boss RE20.

Thanks a lot for this contribution! :)

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Flareless
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by Flareless » Thu Oct 22, 2020 2:04 pm

Thanks to those who contributed to this thread!

My Little Phatty started zombie walking after I rearranged my entire studio. Long story short; it was one particular outlet on one particular power bar that was causing the problem. I'm still not sure why but switching the power bar outlet did the trick.

This thread saved me a pile of troubleshooting that would have been far more involved than just "plug it into another socket"

Cheers!
Rich

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What can this strange device be? When I touch it, it gives forth a sound - Neil Peart


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stiiiiiiive
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by stiiiiiiive » Sun Nov 15, 2020 7:25 am

Coming back with a point I did not cover. I don't have any answer, so anyone having the possibility to try this, plese cotribute :)

What happens when the LEDs are dancing and the Phatty is polychained? Does the problem occurs and all every Phatty, meaning it's tranmitting through MIDI? If not, does it happen if one of the Phattys is plugged in a "safe" outlet while another is not?

About the MIDI part, I guess a simple test is possible without even polychaining: just connect whatever synth/DAW to the Phatty whose LEDs are dancing and monitor the MIDI CC the Phatty sends then.

grenert
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Re: Phatty's dancing LEDs: ultimate guide intent

Post by grenert » Sun Dec 06, 2020 2:14 am

I had this problem on my Slim. I live in an old house with no 3rd prong ground wire, in a densely populated area, so plenty of noise on the AC I'm sure. Fortunately, it was still under warranty, and I returned it to Moog for repair. They did something (no idea what) which completely fixed the problem. So there is some kind of permanent fix for this. Anyone have connections with Asheville to find out what it is???
Moog stuff: Slim Phatty, Minitaur, Mother-32, Werkstatt x2, MF-103, MF-104M, MF-108M
Running Moog software on Win7 64-bit
Dreams of a Voyager XL some day...

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