Help calm the relay down

[Gaz]

Yeah, I agree it's unacceptable as well, but Friedman hasn't been a "factory" for that long, being a "boutique" modder/builder for many years. Circuit flaws in the boutique world is often see excused as "quirks" rather than what they really are - bad design.

[pompeiisneaks]

Yeah I had a buddy ask me to figure out why his friedman butterslax had horrible popping noises on his pedals in the effects loop, I have a thread on it here, and basically it is that the loop is not well balanced with the impedance of the effects, and they themselves seem to have at least 4 revisions, even though it seems very closely mirroring the metro loop as well. These kinds of things, as you noted, don't get the kind of 'public notice' for a smaller boutique company as they do for a larger one.

~Phil

[R.G.]

I think another way to fix it might be to stick in a timing circuit that turned on a signal shunt to ground, then switched the relay, then released the shunt. The shunt mutes the audio path while the pop is taking place, then releases. It hides the problem.I think I could actually get this circuit into a PCB with a ten-pin-DIP footprint, but guitar amp hackers would not want to solder one that little. But even with through hole parts, it's not very big.
Another way is to use two of the LED-to-MOSFET relays to simply replace the relay entirely.