Simple Killswitch pedal question

[drezdn]

I had someone ask me if I could make them a pedal that they can use to just kill their signal after they're done playing. When the pedal is switched off, do I need to have either the input or output connect to ground, or can I just leave an open connection?

[reddesert]

I would ground the output of the killswitch pedal, and disconnect the input. This grounds the input of whatever comes after it. Otherwise, you could have the open circuit pick up noise or hum and feed it into the rest of the chain. Simply disconnecting will work, but grounding the output will work better.

I wouldn't ground the input of the killswitch, because if the killswitch comes after a pedal, then you're short-circuiting the output stage of that pedal. Many circuits will survive this, but it's bad practice to do it.

[drezdn]

Thanks!

[madbean]

One excellent add-on would be to have two switches - one a hard kill and one a momentary kill.