Rocktron RSB-18 switching system

The Rocktron RSB-18 was a switching system made up of two pieces: a rackmount unit and a footcontroller. The two were sold and designed as one system, and Rocktron intended them to be used together rather than mixed with other controllers. In a 2000 interview, Bob Bradshaw described it this way: "It was called an RSB-18 switching system, it was a rackmount unit and a footcontroller. They were integral, you couldn't"¹. For a player, that means the RSB-18 was not a standalone footswitch or a standalone rack switcher: the pair worked as a unit, in the way later MIDI controllers and loop switchers split the jobs of foot control and rack-side switching.

Bradshaw described the RSB-18 as flexible for its time, but with extras built in that he did not consider necessary: "it was pretty flexable, with built in noise reduction and all kinds of extra bells and whistles that weren't really nece[ssary]"¹. Built-in noise reduction meant the system could quiet the signal chain between switched effects without a separate noise gate, a feature some players would have welcomed and others would have bypassed in favor of their own gating.

Cost at release

The RSB-18 also carried a pricing problem on the dealer side. Asked about it, Bradshaw said the price came in "Around $500 more then the dealer cost they have anticipated"¹. In other words, the price dealers paid was roughly $500 above what had been expected, which would have pushed the street price up accordingly. No list price for the unit itself is given in the interview.

Where it sits in Rocktron's switching line

The RSB-18 belongs to the same family of problems that switching pedals and rack loop switchers address: turning effects and amp channels on and off from a floor controller instead of walking to the rack. Rocktron later continued in this territory with products such as the Rocktron Patch Mate, a loop switcher for players who want to switch loops without a full rack system.

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