REVIEW: M-Audio SP-2 Sustain Pedal

I bought an M-Audio SP-2 Sustain Pedal for my keyboard a couple of days ago. My old pedal finally broke irreparably after maybe 25 years, and I wanted a replacement right away… tl;dr: Not so good. Returned.

My main requirement is a "polarity" (NC/NO) switch, which the SP-2 has. The necessity for this switch is that the music industry is epically screwed up. For as long as I can remember, sustain pedals from different manufacturers have had one of two different conventions for indicating when the pedal is down: "normally open", meaning the switch is closed only when you push on the pedal, and "normally closed", meaning the switch is opened only when you push on the pedal. Of course, the pedal must match the keyboard, or it works the opposite of how it is supposed to. Actually, most modern keyboards check the pedal jack when turned on and assume that it is not being pushed, thus auto-sensing. My Casio Privia 330 is not such a keyboard. So, I want a switch so the pedal I buy can be made to work with my Casio and also other random old keyboards.

Unfortunately, the SP-2 is pretty loud when you step on it. Worse yet, it skates like crazy. Skating is a problem caused by a bad pedal design: when you depress the pedal, it also scoots out from under your foot a little bit. Depress the pedal enough times and you're reaching as far under the piano as you can trying to push the fast-receding pedal. Really annoying when it happens in the middle of a song, especially live. Obviously, a given pedal will skate worse on some surfaces than others, but I have thick carpet. Less obviously, some designs have some good combination of vertical attack angle and mechanical anchoring that make them not skate. My old pedal was an epic blob of rubber that you pressed straight down on. It really didn't skate.

Now I'm looking online for my real pedal. I've decided it's worth waiting a few days for something that, with luck, I might be using for another 25 years. (B)