Rich_S
HomeGrownToneBrewologist
Background
I designed and built my first pedalboard in the early '80s, before we could buy them. Isolated multi-output pedal power supplies were unheard of. But I liked the idea of a pedalboard as a single unit, so I built one. The pedals were mounted to a common aluminum plate, that served as the ground point for both the audio and the DIY 9-volt power supply. Power and audio wiring were soldered onto the backs of the jacks, and ran through grommets in the top plate, so that all the wiring was hidden underneath the deck; there were no patch cords.
My first board looked like this:
Nobody had anything like it, except for Gilmore and Summers and a few other professional clients of Pete Cornish. Everybody I knew was still using a couple of pedals on the floor with a tangle of cables and 9-volt battereies of questionable condition.
It evolved over the years, I got a better enclosure, pedals came and went, and when I stopped playing in the late '80s still nobody had anything like it.
Then I took 15 years off to build a career, get maried, have kids, blah, blah, blah. While I was away, everybody went through the rack thing, decided racks sucked, and developed pedalboards and power supplies you can buy at GC, not to mention the whole booteek pedals thing. Now everybody has a pedalboard, although theirs have patch chords and mine still doesn't.
To be continued...
I designed and built my first pedalboard in the early '80s, before we could buy them. Isolated multi-output pedal power supplies were unheard of. But I liked the idea of a pedalboard as a single unit, so I built one. The pedals were mounted to a common aluminum plate, that served as the ground point for both the audio and the DIY 9-volt power supply. Power and audio wiring were soldered onto the backs of the jacks, and ran through grommets in the top plate, so that all the wiring was hidden underneath the deck; there were no patch cords.
My first board looked like this:
Nobody had anything like it, except for Gilmore and Summers and a few other professional clients of Pete Cornish. Everybody I knew was still using a couple of pedals on the floor with a tangle of cables and 9-volt battereies of questionable condition.
It evolved over the years, I got a better enclosure, pedals came and went, and when I stopped playing in the late '80s still nobody had anything like it.
Then I took 15 years off to build a career, get maried, have kids, blah, blah, blah. While I was away, everybody went through the rack thing, decided racks sucked, and developed pedalboards and power supplies you can buy at GC, not to mention the whole booteek pedals thing. Now everybody has a pedalboard, although theirs have patch chords and mine still doesn't.
To be continued...
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