Vintage "Daisy" Doorstop Footswitches

Introduction

I traded some gear and acquired a Custom Kraft amplifier which turns out to be a rebranded version of the Supro Trojan S6622 made by Valco in Chicago, Illinois. It sounds wonderful with its single 6V6 power tube but that will have to be another blog post. Interestingly enough, heres the schematic for the amp: https://schematicheaven.net/bargainbin/supro_s6622.pdf

Source

My amp

My amp has two jacks for instrument pedals; one for the tremolo and one for the spring reverb. But this amp did not have any footswitches when I bought it so there is a need for some control pedals. Enter the Daisy door stop

Daisy Door Stops

The design for the door stop was patented (1,999,111) by William F Schacht from Huntington, Indiana in 1934. He claimed that his design would prevent the door stop from slipping, would reduce unnecessary rubber, and allowing the door stop to be stored upright. All traits that one would expect in a doorstop... Jokes aside, I'm fairly certain that this style has become the standard and so I have to give Mr. Schacht credit for that invention. 

Technical drawing from the US Patent Office website

The legendary door holder itself

They were mass produced by his company, Schacht Rubber Manufacturing Company which was established in 1909 and sold in 1981. 

Sources: US Gov Patent and Huntington County History book

Amp Footswitch

The footswitch is usually a toggle switch attached to a box which allows you to toggle certain features of your amp, most commonly used with reverb and channels. Supro and likely other manufacturers from the era used whatever was cheapest which happened to be a doorstop.

Source

Source

You can see the actual footswitch itself in the Harmony catalog and then the Supro catalog shows a similar amp model to what I have as well as the cost of the "remote foot switch accessory" for $6.50 each.

Conclusion

So "Daisy" branded amp footswitches are not actually from a guitar company named Daisy (and most certainly not the Daisy Rock First Act guitars) but are actually old doorstops that were fashioned into switches. 

Source

The switches aren't terribly expensive based off what I can see on Reverb though they really don't come up that often either. 

Guitarologist

This guy is a fantastic Youtuber who is very knowledgeable on guitars and their accessories, it was through him that I discovered that these were doorstops and not their own brand which inspired this write up.

Heres a video of his where he talks about building your own from a modern doorstop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnmvA8TOq6c