Carl Martin Octa-Switch The Strip

I am in a touring band and both me and our other guitar player bought this switcher. However, we both had problems with it.

I've had multiple switchers and this Carl Martin gets the job done quite fine. Saving a preset is incredibly easy and the instant access mode is helpful and usable. However, the quality control of this pedal needs to be severely improved. When I was playing a recent (+1000 people cap.) sold out show, the pedal quit on me mid-show, resulting in no sound coming from my pedalboard and having to plug the guitar directly into the amp. A situation you do NOT want to have when playing in front of many people. At first the switcher lights were still on and it was not clear the problem resided in the switcher. The next day, however, it turned out that one of the chips in the pedal was set loose and that it was not properly attached. At this point the pedal did not turn on anymore until I pushed back the same chip. This however resulted in the pedal automatically saving other loops (that I had not selected in one of my saved presets?!

Our other guitar player also had problems; sometimes when hitting a preset button too hard it will not switch to that preset.

In the heat of the battle you want a pedal like this to be sturdy, especially for a 500+ euro pedal. My pedalboard is now 'designed' around the dimensions of this switcher, but if I would start over/make a different pedalboard I definitely would have chosen a different and more reliable switcher.