Pedalboards: your way

[hercules]

My question is "What tones am I trying to recreate, and how can I jam as much stuff into the smallest place to achieve those tones."

As my tastes have changed (and my budget) the boards have changed, these days I want a board that can do everything from super clean to filthy walls of sound, the pedals reflect my main influences: John Mayer, John Frusciante, David Gilmour, and Matt Bellamy, but the sound that comes out is hopefully uniquely my own

Aesthetics are highly important to me, I want a really tidy board that I can setup and not have to touch, I switched from Pedaltrain to the Rockboard boards and they're a game changer, way easier to route cables!

I like having a modular patch bay on the back for outputs and inputs, power etc, Rockboard product again, and a single power supply that can power all the pedals (albeit some on daisy chains).

That's very cool. And I hear you on the 'tidy board I don't have to touch'. I checked out Rockboard Quad 4.2 but my PSU (Fender Engine Room) didn't fit under because of those weird centre rails. Hmm.

[hercules]

bish, bash, bosh. neat and does everything I need. sorted.

Do you find yourself having to tweak software/algorithms etc? Or is it pretty set and forget?

[jeremyb]

My question is "What tones am I trying to recreate, and how can I jam as much stuff into the smallest place to achieve those tones."

As my tastes have changed (and my budget) the boards have changed, these days I want a board that can do everything from super clean to filthy walls of sound, the pedals reflect my main influences: John Mayer, John Frusciante, David Gilmour, and Matt Bellamy, but the sound that comes out is hopefully uniquely my own

Aesthetics are highly important to me, I want a really tidy board that I can setup and not have to touch, I switched from Pedaltrain to the Rockboard boards and they're a game changer, way easier to route cables!

I like having a modular patch bay on the back for outputs and inputs, power etc, Rockboard product again, and a single power supply that can power all the pedals (albeit some on daisy chains).

That's very cool. And I hear you on the 'tidy board I don't have to touch'. I checked out Rockboard Quad 4.2 but my PSU (Fender Engine Room) didn't fit under because of those weird centre rails. Hmm.

Can you rotate it 90 degrees? I had to do that with my Harley Benton one

[hercules]

I have been using a templeboard for a while now. If you want it to be OCD perfect it won't be cheap. Custom cables I made, specific connectors, mods... I have spent hours on this thing. Get crafty with other stuff you can make or buy to fill gaps.

Nice, I will look into those as I hadn't heard of them. I have been making most of my own cables (Evidence Audio) but, as you say, it's not cheap. I think I am not very good with the measuring/engineering aspect of it and end up with a bit of a mess, no matter how hard I try not to...

[hercules]

Can you rotate it 90 degrees? I had to do that with my Harley Benton one

I don't think so, it wouldn't fit the jug cord in the back without a serious struggle. Maybe the bigger ones have better spacing.

[hercules]

Get a good true bypass looper and put your whole pedalboard (pedals off/bypassed) in the loop. Crank your amp - high gain preferable. Then switch in/out to see what your board does to the noise. Troubleshoot from there.

Pay particular attention to pedal placement near power supplies - and cable placement - move them around to see if the noise changes.

You’d be surprised how much in-necessary noise there often is…..

I have a Boss ES8 and am taking some time to learn how to use it properly. These are good tips. One thing I hadn't really understood was parallel loops, so that's an extra can of worms (with possibly great payoff).

[hercules]

(posts pictures of awesome board)

Now that is awesome. Similar here re: the covers band life, we don't play all that often but I usually end up doing sound and have very little time to fine-tune my own gear. Simplicity is definitely a big factor I need to think more carefully about.

I still really like the design of that board though. I guess the challenge is then having the right case for it.

[jeremyb]

Can you rotate it 90 degrees? I had to do that with my Harley Benton one

I don't think so, it wouldn't fit the jug cord in the back without a serious struggle. Maybe the bigger ones have better spacing.

I’ll take a picture of mine tomorrow, You can get 90 degree jug cords which do the trick!

[Candeevr4]

I had the board that JB has, actually sold it back to him...

I then got a bigger Rockboard in this style: https://pedaltrain.com/products/pedaltr ... -soft-case. Found i had the cable space underneath and I could put a Rockboard mod on it, but cabling was a nightmare. I actually had to raise the es5 so I could cable it.
USER_SCOPED_TEMP_DATA_orca-image--909958735.jpeg

I have just bought a Duo 2.2 as I have sold the es5 and all the pedals on the right hand side and have a HX stomp.

Wait... You're missing half of your TU-3 tuner!

The TU3s is great if you dont need it as a mute. The ES5 & 8's have a tuner out, so you just have it on all the time!

[jeremyb]

So here’s how I mounted my PSU, used a right angle jug cord and put a female socket on the other end to plug it into the patch bay Board is the Quad 4.2 btw.

[hercules]

Ah, lateral thinking indeed. Hadn't seen a RA jug cord before, intriguing.

[jeremyb]

Ah, lateral thinking indeed. Hadn't seen a RA jug cord before, intriguing.

You can get them at jaycar, bloody handy!

[Voltron]

I have just finished building my new board










Nothing particularly special about any of the pedals but have spent a bit of time thinking about how I want it laid out. Could never find a board that quite fit my needs. Wanted it in a case as I hate throwing it in and out of the car with everything exposed.

Have built this from scratch.

When I got the power supply a noticed that the input is 18v DC and I realised that I can get that from a power tool battery. So the whole thing is powered off a dewalt battery. Had to add a little extra height at the back to fit the battery underneath, couldn’t find anything off the shelf that had enough room.

Put a little voltmeter/ammeter at the front so I can keep an eye on the battery state. It seems to draw between 10 to 20 milliamps depending on what is turned on so with a 5 amp hour battery I should get at least 100 hours per charge.

Have hinged the back board to get access to the wiring/battery/power supply etc.

Have got guitar in, amp out and effects loop send and receive jacks in the back so I just need to whack my leads in and I’m ready to go.

On/off switch at the front so I don’t have to pull the battery when not in use.

I’m quite pleased with how it has turned out.

[hercules]

That is super smart and impressive! I like it.

[Cdog]

Pedalboard looks great... bonus points for AC free operation! Is that Orange pedal an amplifier?