I have been using an SQ-6 at my church for well over 2 years now, but the last couple of Sundays I’ve found that nearly every time I go for the Gain knob, the HPF gets selected instead. I think I must be brushing against the HPF knob with my finger but I can’t work out why that is happening now - I don’t think I ever experienced it until recently.
More of an annoyance than a real problem at the moment, but I’d be grateful for any tips or suggestions to avoid it.
You’re clearly turning the Gain knob, but instead the HPF value changes?
Or what do you mean with ‘select’?
What happens is I go to grab the gain knob but somehow I end up with HPF frequency selected. If I give the gain knob a little twist it goes back to how it should be. I reckon I am brushing against the HPF knob - SQ ‘thinks’ I want that although my fingers are actually on the gain. If I am very careful not to touch the HPF everything is fine - it could be a bit of clumsiness on my part but I have worked on this desk a lot and never seen this happen until last couple of weeks. And it just doesn’t seem ‘right’ that you can’t just grab the gain without guitarist’s fingering. I am wondering if there’s a bit of dirt or something on the gain knob which means it’s not registering my podgy fingers straight away?
The controls on the SQ are not touch-sensitive, meaning you have to turn the knob first before anything happens and the screen switches.
If something happens just by lightly touching a knob, there’s most likely a problem with the knob itself (loose contact).
Unfortunately, this would require a service technician to fix.
You’ve probably enabled ‘Setup - Surface - Surface Prefs - Processing Screens Follow Surface’.
If you disable it, at least it won’t accidentally switch to the HPF screen.
But then you’ll have to manually select all the other processing screens too.
If things get even worse with the HPF knob: On SQ>5, you could even assign both knobs to soft rotaries.
Thanks! Yes that must be the issue - as I originally put it, the HPF knob seemed super sensitive, and it is exactly the case you mentioned - something happening just by lightly touching the knob.
As per my original post it is an annoyance rather than a problem at the moment, so I’ll persevere with my current set up and see if I can learn to live with it. Like a strange new rattle on your car, it’s easier to tolerate once you know the cause, so thanks for your expert diagnosis.
I do have spare soft rotaries available for a workaround if it becomes necessary - great suggestion! And thanks ever so much for your prompt and helpful response!
Thanks for your kind feedback.
Oh, that’s good. It’s not a bad idea to stock up on a few wear-and-tear parts.
Although our SQ isn’t on the hit list yet, thanks to the release of the SQ-Rack.
I think I’ve already found also the right encoders online, but perhaps your source would be better … )
Pretty sure they mean they have an assignable knob on the SQ-6 that they’re not using for anything, not a spare replacement part.
Sorry, I can’t figure out what you might mean this time. 
So I also took it that when @RobW said “I do have spare soft rotaries available for a workaround”….. he meant that he could assign either the Gain or HPF knob to a spare soft rotary on the desk, rather than thinking that the standard Gain and HPF knobs are not functioning correctly (and thus needing to be replaced).
Not sure that this will necessarily solve the problem though as you can’t deselect those standard Gain and HPF rotaries from their functions so you are still in danger of knocking them by mistake.
Ah, yes - thank you @nottooloud and @nickevansaudio - me and “my English”.
Now I get it, and I don’t know why I didn’t before. )
And yes, of course it doesn’t solve the hardware problem …
No worries at all!! It’s worth saying that I do appreciate all the input, effort and insight that you put into these forums! 
Oh - thank you very much! 
Yes that’s exactly what I meant. I only use two of the four assignable rotaries (and those not very heavily) so it wouldn’t be a problem to put at least the gain control onto a spare one, with my plan then to train myself to use that knob in preference to the standard one. That should largely eliminate the risk of me touching the faulty HPF by mistake when I’m setting gains.
It’s the sort of idea that I might not have thought of by myself so @SQuser suggestion is very well received!
@SQuser I didn’t want to tempt fate by saying anything before, but that faulty knob has behaved completely normally for 4 weeks now, and I think it has fixed itself somehow.
At least I’ll know how to react if I see anything similar happening again!
Thanks once more.
Thank you also for your feedback.
It sounds like good news, but since you certainly didn’t imagine the problem, it may only have calmed down temporarily.
But long may the calm stay! )