Introduction: Line 6 Spider Amp Hack
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About: I'm a middle aged married man! I like to work with electronics, computers, cable, test equipment. Making things work. Playing with electronics is my life I guess, but mostly discovering how it works. Beep! Bo…
If you have Line 6 Spider amplifier, and you don't have the foot pedal as an accessory, I bet you wish you did? This hack might be for you.
If you notice on the amplifier there is a 8 pin jack similar to what people in the network world call a RJ45 jack.
Well I looked all over on the Internet, and could not find an answer to my question. What is the schematic for the foot switch? So I started to investigate what each pin did. I assumed since Line 6 is mostly digital based, I'm dealing with high and lows. i.e. One's and zero's.
I got my digital multimeter and figured out the voltage on the various pins to ground.
Pin 1 Ground
Pin 2 + 5 VDC
Pin 3 + Ground
Pin 4 + 5 VDC
Pin 5 +.1 ? Not quite ground
Pin 6 + 5 VDC
Pin 7 + 5 VDC
Pin 8 + 5 VDC
Pin 5 seemed kind of odd to me, so I shorted it to pin 6. To my surprise the amplifier shuts all effects down. Including the LEDs, but low and behold I still get amplification, but no effects. Just plain amplification is all I would get. If I short to pin 6 to pin 5 again, it toggles back to the effect. Voila, I get some control with my own rigged up foot switch.
Pin 5 must be a trigger that's my only deductions. I tried other combinations like 7 and 1 it seems to reset the amp.
You may want to play with shorting to other pins, but pins 5 and 6 seem to be the most useful I noticed when the effect is really distorted with overdrive there is a slight pop sometimes when it kicks in, so you might find that shorting pin 7 and 1 might be more useful in this case, but you would have to install two switches.
Material needed:
RJ45 Jack I'm using a Levington Jack from Home Depot. The package comes with a punch down tool too.
Some 22 guage wire to punch down to a jack. Scrap from CAT5e cable will do.
A suface mount box to house jack. This is the Leviton box made for the jack that I purchased.
Patch network cord 8 pin plug on both sides. It has to be a straight through cable.
A normally open switch to provide the momentary short to toggle effect.
Solder to secure the wire to the switch.
Tools
Wire snips
Punch down tool like the one in the picture
Soldering Iron
Drill
3/8 bit to drill into the plastic box.
When punching down the wire on the jack I followed the T568B which is the standard that most people follow.
I picked solid green and White blue which are pins 5 and 6 of the jack.
You can probably buy all the parts for less than $10.00. You can splurge on LED's and a 330 ohm resisters to show connectivity since we are dealing with 5 volts at the end of the wire, but not necessary.
A simple hack!
Well there you have it! Let me know if you find something else, or improvement to this hack.
I know I'm probably doing something that LIne 6 probably would say not to do, but it's worked for me, and now I'm enjoying my amp more.
Cheers!
I could not get the video to work using the uploader, so I posted the video on you tube. The link is imbeded in the body of this instructible.
If you notice on the amplifier there is a 8 pin jack similar to what people in the network world call a RJ45 jack.
Well I looked all over on the Internet, and could not find an answer to my question. What is the schematic for the foot switch? So I started to investigate what each pin did. I assumed since Line 6 is mostly digital based, I'm dealing with high and lows. i.e. One's and zero's.
I got my digital multimeter and figured out the voltage on the various pins to ground.
Pin 1 Ground
Pin 2 + 5 VDC
Pin 3 + Ground
Pin 4 + 5 VDC
Pin 5 +.1 ? Not quite ground
Pin 6 + 5 VDC
Pin 7 + 5 VDC
Pin 8 + 5 VDC
Pin 5 seemed kind of odd to me, so I shorted it to pin 6. To my surprise the amplifier shuts all effects down. Including the LEDs, but low and behold I still get amplification, but no effects. Just plain amplification is all I would get. If I short to pin 6 to pin 5 again, it toggles back to the effect. Voila, I get some control with my own rigged up foot switch.
Pin 5 must be a trigger that's my only deductions. I tried other combinations like 7 and 1 it seems to reset the amp.
You may want to play with shorting to other pins, but pins 5 and 6 seem to be the most useful I noticed when the effect is really distorted with overdrive there is a slight pop sometimes when it kicks in, so you might find that shorting pin 7 and 1 might be more useful in this case, but you would have to install two switches.
Material needed:
RJ45 Jack I'm using a Levington Jack from Home Depot. The package comes with a punch down tool too.
Some 22 guage wire to punch down to a jack. Scrap from CAT5e cable will do.
A suface mount box to house jack. This is the Leviton box made for the jack that I purchased.
Patch network cord 8 pin plug on both sides. It has to be a straight through cable.
A normally open switch to provide the momentary short to toggle effect.
Solder to secure the wire to the switch.
Tools
Wire snips
Punch down tool like the one in the picture
Soldering Iron
Drill
3/8 bit to drill into the plastic box.
When punching down the wire on the jack I followed the T568B which is the standard that most people follow.
I picked solid green and White blue which are pins 5 and 6 of the jack.
You can probably buy all the parts for less than $10.00. You can splurge on LED's and a 330 ohm resisters to show connectivity since we are dealing with 5 volts at the end of the wire, but not necessary.
A simple hack!
Well there you have it! Let me know if you find something else, or improvement to this hack.
I know I'm probably doing something that LIne 6 probably would say not to do, but it's worked for me, and now I'm enjoying my amp more.
Cheers!
I could not get the video to work using the uploader, so I posted the video on you tube. The link is imbeded in the body of this instructible.
