Pedal boards... again...

[JB_From_Hell]

I’ve been building all sorts of crap lately, and decided a board was next. I know that fancy boards are all the rage, but I can’t get behind spending as much as a killer pedal costs on one.

My pedals are all currently daisy chained with a 1 Spot, with Planet Waves patch cables. Was gonna build a board this Sunday, but I went to see Chris Duarte do a clinic yesterday. His “board” was four or five pedals, daisy chained with a 1 Spot, laying on the floor. I commented on his fancy setup, he laughed and said he had a nice board back in the day, but had a pedal crap out mid-set and getting it out of the chain was a pain in the ass. Said he’d just “rolled like this since then.”

Dude wrote my favorite blues rock song ever, and was one of my first guitar heroes. If it’s good enough for him, I think I’ll stick with it.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

I think there is something to be said for practicality. I've seen boards with 20 pedals on them. They were so close together, that if a patch cable died, it would be impossible to tell which one much less get the pedals off the board to fix it. One of my pedalsboards is plywood. The other was a used PedalTrain Jr. Things don't have to be fancy at all.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Nothing wrong with using a 1-spot and daisy chaining for power.

 

[NegativeEase]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

My board is simple for the same reason -reliability

I got tired of fiddling with boards after traveling that day and the inability to quickly troubleshoot.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

^ Chris Duarte’s extravagant setup. Pardon the stupid sideways upload. That CE-2 is battered, but is an awesome Leslie simulation.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

i have two pedal boards currently. one is battery powered and has sunface, dirty little secret mkii, and vapor trail. its mounted on a 1/4" x 10" x 6" piece of scrap wood. my other has a fulltone mas malo, phase 90, vox valvetone, wh green rhino, and deja vu. mounted on a 1/2" x 6" x 16" piece of scrap wood and powered by a one spot. i have another board that needs to get put together with a voodoo lab power supply, true bypass loops etc... but im lazy and what i have is workin fine. mounting everything on a plank with some velcro makes it easier to setup and tear down quickly or id be just as happy with the floor method

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

^ incidentally, glad the Phase 90 and Rhino are working for you.

 

[NegativeEase]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

View attachment 101131

Honestly, I don't like this approach either -this was my approach in the 90s and it created as many problems as it solved.

power jacks kicked out, TLS jacks bents, pedals sliding, tripping etc etc.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

The point of a board to me is ease of setup- I don't have to hook everything together all the time.

 

[RevDoom73]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Yeah definitely plenty of pros and cons to having the pedal board. I've had the whole problem of a pedal or patch cable going bad mid-set happen to me and it can be really frustrating to troubleshoot on a tightly packed and wired board. Plus I have to have a few different pedal boards in my arsenal since I play with a bunch of different bands and sessions and I don't really just want one giant board with a million pedals on there that'll work for everything, it's just too cumbersome. At the same time, many of the gigs I play are at festivals where having a quick load-on/load-off stage is imperative, and it's so much easier just picking up a pedal board and getting it all offstage quickly in one neat piece. Also lately I've done 80% of my gigs with the PowerStage 170 as my amp so it's easier having that on a board than just sitting on the stage. For me the best solution is having several small boards that are compact, quick and easier to troubleshoot is the key.
I also don't care for the whole idea of just loosely putting pedals on the stage because I've wound up losing more patch cables, OneSpots and even pedals in the past in the rushed madness of the quick teardown offstage and load-out. As my pedals have gotten more expensive, I've gotten more protective of them! lol

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Nothing wrong with using a 1-spot and daisy chaining for power.

...until there is something wrong with it?

For home playing, stringing daisy chains and patch cables is fine. I’m glad it’s working for him, but putting together a good board was great for playing outside of the house.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

...until there is something wrong with it?

For home playing, stringing daisy chains and patch cables is fine. I’m glad it’s working for him, but putting together a good board was great for playing outside of the house.

You can put together a good board for playing outside the house with 1-spots. I've been using 1-spots for more than fifteen years now, and am currently powering seven pedals with two of them. No noise issues from my board. Quick and easy setup when gigging. I can run all the pedals from a single 1-spot in a pinch if a problem was to arise.

What issues specifically have you run into with 1-spots while playing out? I've heard of certain poorly designed pedals introducing noise into a daisy chain . . . if you've got multiple extremely high current draw pedals and didn't figure out your power requirements you might run into issues too. Aside from that what is there?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

I use a 1 spot to power a Line 6 M9, and have for like 10 years in all sorts of venues. It has always worked fine.

 

[Aceman]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Well, for ultra backup I have a 5 pedal board of JUST Mooers - no trouble shooting; Guitar to board, board to front of amp (or DI to house), done!

But even my big board didn't have stuff packed so damn tight I couldn't undo anything fast or jiggle something to find the offending box/circuit/cable.

My loop multi-fx is one pedal, and just wah, amp channel with and one/two others...actually going to board them but just "on a board"

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Mark Letteiri (sp?) from Snarky Puppy mounted his pedals on a cutting board. He said the only downside was his wife got upset for swiping her cutting board, so he had to go to Target and buy her another.

 

[MGW]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Simple plywood board with a bit of crinkle paint and some velcro.
A 7 place power source resides under the second tier.
I've made a number of these over the years in various sizes.
This size seem to be the most versatile for my needs.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

You can put together a good board for playing outside the house with 1-spots. I've been using 1-spots for more than fifteen years now, and am currently powering seven pedals with two of them. No noise issues from my board. Quick and easy setup when gigging. I can run all the pedals from a single 1-spot in a pinch if a problem was to arise.

What issues specifically have you run into with 1-spots while playing out? I've heard of certain poorly designed pedals introducing noise into a daisy chain . . . if you've got multiple extremely high current draw pedals and didn't figure out your power requirements you might run into issues too. Aside from that what is there?

Sorry, I mashed a bunch of thoughts into one short post.

One-Spots are great products, what I meant by “good until you’re not” is you’ll be going along fine until you add the wrong pedal (high draw, digital ground, etc.) and all of a sudden it doesn’t work for you anymore. I wouldn’t say poorly designed, basically all the digital ground pedals are going to put noise on the link. I used to use a daisy chain for my Line 6 Echo Park, Verbzilla and whatever overdrive I was using. I thought there was “no noise” until I actually used isolated power for them. Regarding home/playing out, I prefer a single, quick power connection (which can be an extension cord to a One-Spot) as opposed to having to run a One-Spot over to whatever power strip is laying around. Having it zip tied to an extension cord and to a board seems much more reliable.


Plywood boards are great, just need something to secure everything to (including power and cables).

 

[dystrust]

Re: Pedal boards... again...

Every time I build a board I have this hard-to-suppress urge to throw it all in a rack case with a GCX so I don't have to tap dance anymore. I thought I'd finally beaten that urge with the switcher on my current board, but low and behold here we are.

I'm currently working with this:

Signal chain is:
Guitar -> vibe -> wah -> switcher (clean / dirty / tuner loops)
Clean: MIJ CS-3 -> GT-500 -> CE-2 -> FRV-1 -> TR-2
Dirty: Tumnus -> UFO (fuzz / octave) -> Micro Flanger -> MIJ DD-3 (~300ms)
Tuner: Korg Pitchblack Portable

It's really flexible and I'm able to pull the overwhelming majority of tones I'd use from it. However there are a few things it doesn't do easily (like Flanged clean) and there's still a little tap dancing.

If I were to rack it, I'd put the CS-3, Tumnus, and UFO in GCX loops and add a Line6 M9 between the CS-3 and Tumnus mostly for pre-gain modulation and maybe tape delay. Since the Jubilee loop plays nice with rack processors, I'm thinking a Rocktron Replifex and Blackface Intellifex for pretty much any other effect I'd want. Top it off with a final GCX loop for channel switching. I could put the wah and tuner on the board with the Ground Control Pro, or I could use the wah in the M9 via expression, though I'm leaning toward the former.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Pedal boards... again...

I just put my first pedal board together. [emoji3526] I had been a bass players in bands for the past 40 years. In my current original band I’m the guitarist.

So I hadn’t a need for a lot of pedals. I still don’t use that many, but it was a pain to plug everything in every time.

These are all pedals that are used for parts of songs, especially on solos. The rest of my effects like delay, modulation, reverb, etc., are in my amp (Marshall Code 100)

The power supply and volume pedal didn’t fit on the board.

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