Pedalboard Materials?

[Brow]

Hey guys.

I know this has probably been covered before, but in your opinion which is the 'best' material to make a pedalboard from?

I was going to make a simple 12mm thick plywood board with a lid, but thought it was worth posting on here to see if anyone had any better suggestions?

Craig

 

[bungalowbill]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Use Birch plywood if it is available... I used it for mine and it is very stiff without adding a lot of weight. I think I paid about $11.00 at Lowe's for a piece large enough for a big pedalboard. If you can find a carpetstore that sell remnants cheap, the carpet (I used closed loop berber) works better than that black fuzzy stuff that is commercially used, IMHO.

 

[Closed Eye]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Go to the scrapwood section of Lowe's or Home Depot, find a nice piece of solid wood, and then ask them to cut for it for you. I got mine free of charge because they'd already cut a pretty big piece for some other dude.

Carpet works good for the base or you can also just run two velcro non sticky side strips across lengthwise across the board.

Then, go get yourself some of that industrial strength sticky side velcro, attach it to the bottom of your pedals, and you're done!

 

[Brow]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Thanx for the posts guys

I was thinking of screwing the pedals to the board itself, as I've found velcro doesn't work too well with some of my pedals (Wah, larger OD pedals like G2D and Fulltone units).

I remember someone posting a picture of a Aluminium (I think) based pedalboard that looked quite cool.

 

[bungalowbill]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Thanx for the posts guys

I was thinking of screwing the pedals to the board itself, as I've found velcro doesn't work too well with some of my pedals (Wah, larger OD pedals like G2D and Fulltone units).

I remember someone posting a picture of a Aluminium (I think) based pedalboard that looked quite cool.

If you use carpet and heavy duty velcro they will stick good enough that they are hard as hell to pull off the board. I've used it with Vox wahs and the big Virtual sound units with no problems. If you do screw down your pedals there is the drawback of not being able to move the pedals around on the board if you aquire new ones or want to reposition your existing pedals.

 

[RW James]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

I've built a couple of the plywood based boards with industrial strength Velcro and it works well, EXCEPT for the wah pedal as you noted.

What I did there was, in addition to the Velcro, I got a strip of black nylon webbing and ran a length across the body of the pedal (below the pedal part) and screwed the webbing directly to the plywood (with washers). The webbing combined with the Velcro kept everything in place.

I was about to build a third pedal board for my new situation and I happened across the pedal boards at Rondo Music, and for the price, it hardly seemed worth building my own. I bought one of theirs - I have gigged with it several times and love it. One of the nice things is that with the lid, the wah stays in place during transport. The only drawback is the crummy Velcro they give you is useless. You still have to go buy your own. But it's a great case.

 

[Closed Eye]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Thanx for the posts guys

I was thinking of screwing the pedals to the board itself, as I've found velcro doesn't work too well with some of my pedals (Wah, larger OD pedals like G2D and Fulltone units).

I remember someone posting a picture of a Aluminium (I think) based pedalboard that looked quite cool.

For your wah pedals:

http://www.stompin-ground.com/products/sgwahplate.htm

The larger ODs just may require two strips of velcro put lengthwise across the top and bottom of the pedal. I'm not sure about screwing your pedals into the pedalboard though...

ScreamingDaisy had the Aluminum pedalboard...I think XSSIVE just picked one up as well...

Here's XSSIVE's pedalboard:
https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=71132

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Make your pedalboard out of aluminum if you can swing it . . . it's solid and much lighter weight than wood.

 

[Mr Wolf]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

My last pedalboard was ply. Ive made a smaller one now out of MDF, havent used it yet but i reckon its strong enough.

 

[chrisa]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

My current board is based on a 24"x12" plywood plate, about 1/2" thick. I used double sided foam tape to attach fiberglass plates to the bottom of the pedals, and these plates I screwed onto the board itself. But the problems are that first of all it's way too heavy to carry around in a suitcase. Secondly, it gathers dust etc very easily inbetween the pedals. And third of all it looks like a mess. So I've decided to use 3mm aluminium and incorporate most of my pedals into one unit, and the bigger ones like my DD20 and JH-1 will just have theyr baseplates removed and screwed directly to the bottom plate, which will also be 3mm aluminium.

 

[Brow]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Thanx for the posts guys.

I'm trying to find a solid but as light weight a material as possible to build my board from as it'll be quite heavy when I've fixed everything to it.

The main reason (aside from support of my wah) that I was going to screw the pedals to the board is that I'll have pretty much everything I'm likely to use already on there, so I won't need much (if anything) adding to it for the forseeable future.

Thanx for all the ideas as regards securing my Wah to the board with something else other than screws

Here's a very bad drawing of the pedals I plan to have on the board and a possible layout for them:

 

[Brow]

Re: Pedalboard Materials?

Any other opinions?