Why do pedal builders put the LED next to the footswitch?

[Schlatte]

Re: Led next to footswitch- it's easy... you have to wire a little less, but that doesn't bother me. I put the led where I think it fits. On the iron curtain it is on the opposite site of the footswitch, on the fuzzler+ too... on the normal fuzzler it's pretty close to the footswitch, but you can still see it with your foot on the switch. Even on the little Bacon booster the led is far away from the switch. It also depends on the whole enclosure layout with jacks, pots, switches and the circuit board. Where led fits there led sits.

Re: unusable dead spots- MXR Fullbore Metal Gain knob... goes from Distortion at min to heavy distortion at 0.1 over min and the rest is pretty much a slight sizzle control? srsly? Why u no use a reverse log pot? (idk if they use a rev. log or a lin... but I assume it's not a rev. log... correct me if I'm wrong please). I just fooled around with clipping pots the last few weekends and I think it's pretty useable.. in connection with a diode selector switch... yeah... I can see myself using that.... BUT only with the right diodes- with germanium diodes it does pretty much nothing most of the time...

[Narwhal-Industries]

OK, let's move on to the next subject: Pedals which have unusable/dead spots at some point in the range of one or more of their controls.

I make sure all my designs sound good with the controls at 12 o'clock and have a good sweep over the whole range. I do a lot of RnD which means for now we'll most likely only come out with one new design a year. I feel that if I can hand a pedal over to someone that is 14 or someone that is 40 and neither ask me what it does then the controls work right.