Electro-Harmonix Hot Foot

Pain in the butt to set up.

bolt that holds it to the knob could break most knobs...only 2 safe positions. meaning hook up the stomp box side first...flip the pedal over and find you range by moving the rocker side of the cable.

BOTH pedals MUST be velcro'd into place
....orientation of the two pedals changes the range of effect.

cable flails around as the rocker moves....needs to be pinned behind other cables....you ALL know what a flirt with death THAT can be.

Rocker only goes far enough to sweep through 1/2 the range of ANY knob......so you have to pick WHICH HALF of the knob's range does what you need...you can NOT go from zero to 10 on your delay...trust me ...I WANTED THAT...this does not do that...it does form 2 up to 7...which gets almost the effect I wanted. slap back all the way to portishead saturation infinite repeat....ALMOST what I wanted.

if it went all the way to zero then it'd act like a sweep from bypass to extree delay....get my drift.

a little frustrated that this won't quite get me that much range of motion.

the T.I.P. third hand has a TOTALLY unrestricted heel range for this VERY reason.

it sqweeks if its not oiled....lol

this thing has no signals passing through it....so it's moot what it "sounds" ...sounds like a wah sounds when the amp is off.

if you are looking at Harmony Central's Similar items...don't be misled this is NOTHING AT ALL LIKE ANY OF THOSE...this it identical to the T.I.P. Third hand....would not be 1% surprised if TIP is a rogue division of EHX ....maybe the guy who pitched this design to them later launched that group...maybe somebody who had an old hotfoot came up with the TIP design as an improvement and found a way to market it....I think the T.I.P. is WAY WAY more usable but the brake cable design has some inherint limitations..... a well isolated 100K pot with some solder could yeild the same effect with WAY better results if you ask me.

it works for 15-30 mintues at a time....needs constant coddling to keep in position.

remember it ALL has to be velcro'd down...both the stomp and the hot foot....and the cable has to be in a specific spot to do what you expect.

if the bolt that holds it in place slips....you are left with the last setting...in my rig...it hooks to my mem man, god forbid it ever slip while the repeats knob is at full mast ...I use it to CREATE feedback on purpose.

if you baby it and spend two hours finding the sweet spot AND velco it down...it's going to work fine...until you move either pedal from the velco (battery replacement comes to mind as a mine field)

no such thing from EHX.

T.I.P. will likely sell you replacement cable.....but then again...the T.I.P. pedal goes for $80 on amazon.

hotfoots are between 100-500 depending on if it has the pan feature and if it's in good reliable function....

i can do the math....that means for ONE hot foot with pan I can buy 3 or 4 TIP third hands.....only detractor is the brazen color blue.

you really like black...I hear Home Depot sells spray paint that can fix that color blue.

Neat Novelty.....a great history piece....collector's item.

kick ANYONE you see using these live.....they MAKE NEW ONES!

T.I.P.'s are cheaper and work better.

Additionally.....after repeated use...I have to state that the WHOLE DESIGN of the Hot Foot AND the TIP third hand have inherit limitations. it's a brake cable and some compression screws at either end.....the cable is NOT a fixed rigid bar or a reliable connection. it is kludgy by any engineers standards and I'd say....buy a couple used Dunlop Vol or Wah pedals.....they ALL have a 100K pot in the circut.

cut the circut board out....run the wires from the pirated 100K pot to the circut board on your stomp box ...you might need to drill a hole....who here doesn't own a drill? solder it fast and you you don't even HAVE to remove the old knob...just turn it all the way to zero....full reistance......kuts out the effect...your new 100K pot will likely ALWAYS be the path of least resistance and will pass the electricity and cause the signal to open or close as you choose....same effect less hassle then physical knob spinning with a brake cable....note...you WILL need to coat this with sticky tinfoil as the rig is an antenea...but if you own a soldering iron and a drill ...you SHOULD already know what the hell you're doing when mod-DIY-Circut Bending stomp boxes....after all...they are ONLY STOMPBOXES...experiment with a DOD or Boss...they cost $25 and are all made of the same mass produced scrap metal

This pedal has no electronic parts. It is a wah-style rocker pedal with a rotating flexible shaft attached. The shaft fits onto a potentiometer control of another effect box so you can "turn the knob" with your foot. Ease of use is limited only by the difficulty of removing the knob you wish to control on the second effect. Some effects do not have enough room for the hardware to attach and make a complete turn.

Real time control of an effect's parameters can give your old pedals whole new sounds. For example: I hook this up to the "manual" knob of an MXR Flanger, and turn the "width" to zero. This gives me the ability to operate the flange sweep by foot, giving a wah-wah type of expressiveness, but with the trippier frequency sweep of a flanger. Hooking up the shaft to the "rate" control of an MXR phase 90 means you can speed-up/slow-down the speed of the phase shifting to match the dynamics of the music as you play. Changing the rate of a tremolo pedal will cause vertigo.This is a very simple idea, but infinitely useful.

The downside of this device is that it is both fragile and awkward. It functions best when the 18-inch flexible shaft is not bent, but straightened out to its full length...otherwise, resistance and slippage occur proportionally to how much it is bent. I don't know where you could ever find replacement parts as they all seem very custom-made and EH is long gone (except for the handful of reissue projects), so I never use it outside of the studio/home because of its rarity.

N/A.......Don't break it!

Shortcomings aside, I love this thing. It's an awesome studio tool. You can fade in effects subtly by turning their mix/depth/level controls, or go for maximum tripiness by controlling rates and sweeps. It makes me wonder why more companies have not released foot-controlled versions of their popular effects. If only they were cheaper or sturdier, so I'd feel comfortable taking it out of the house.