I bought an electric guitar this year (my 1st electric) but before I bought it I started on a pedal board. My eldest daughter thought it was hilarious and the kind of “random” thing I do: buy pedals and a board for a guitar I haven’t even bought.
I see the tone chase as a long term journey, so thought it might be fun and hopefully interesting to document how it progresses over time.
(Edit: I changed the thread name as there’s stuff other than the pedal board that I’m using now which is contributing to my tone, that I expect will evolve over time).
So the 1st step was to talk to a mate. The type of mate who gets a day with the “That Pedal Show” guys as a birthday present (really, he did ). I largely went with his suggestions for the Ist iteration of the board.
But being an engineer, planning was required before I dived in. Also I find it difficult to visualise without having something physical in front of me, so I drew out what it might look like once filled.
The red pedals were ones I had already acquired, the blue ones “to be acquired”. Once I got the pedals on, it was clear I’m probably not going to fit all of the plan on, but it helped me do the initial lay out.
Here is what Rev 1 looked like. I must have bought the chorus pedal shortly after the planning drawing.
The 3 on the left hand side were bought second hand. The Bad Monkey has been in our house for 15 to 20 years, but we could never get anything useful out of it (maybe more later on that). The tuner (top right) was bought new.
Of course before you can get any pedals on a board you need a board. I bought the Pedaltrain Metro from a fellow bassist who was also selling an Origin Effects BassRig Super Vintage pedal (an amp in a box that emulates an Ampeg SVT - more about that later maybe). It was the pedal I wanted, rather than the board.
At the time I was trying to decide between a multi effects unit and pedals for the guitar I hadn’t yet bought. The board was decently priced and we cut a deal for the multi buy. So the pedals vs Multi effects decision was made (a weird way to make a decision I know, but reference my daughter’s earlier comment about my randomness ).
Based on my bass pedal board, I knew there is a limited choice of isolated power supplies that fit under the Pedaltrain Metro. So I did a bit of modding. I gained an extra 2cm at the back with some plastic feet (cost a few quid from Amazon) and a bit of nifty work with matchsticks, super glue and a screwdriver.
……then when I went to GuitarGuitar to get the pedal supply we found that the position of the power inlet and the outlets meant the only option from the ones they had in stock was the Cioks DC7. It would have fitted under the board unmodified (I think) . I quite like the rise though. Also the DC7 is easily expandable to an additional 4 or 8 outputs, so I think it was probably a good result.
If you are concerned with cabling and layout, you may want to check out the Temple Audio boards and modules. They are a bit expensive, but you can get a really good result with them.
Especially if you use them in conjunction with a custom cabling kit, like the Evidence Audio or Boss ones.
Thanks @GrytPipe. It’s an entertaining channel. I love Josh Scott’s sense of humour. My updated config even has one of his pedals on it - a 3 series distortion (see below).
@Majik . Thanks. I’ll stick with board I have though. It came with adjustable cable tidies - a laddered loop, that attached to the underside of the board with a (very) sticky pad. I’d never seen them before
I had one of those pedal boards and got rid of it. It seems a fundamental design flaw that you want a small neat pedal board and yet the feet aren’t tall enough to hold the majority of power supplies meaning the setup becomes less neat. I did consider a mod like you’ve done but ultimately I knew I’d want a bigger board so that’s what I did
So this is Rev 2. I thought Josh Scott deserved some business for having such a great channel, not overtly pushing his products and happily saying how good other people’s pedals are. I liked the idea of the 3 series: keep costs down by using the same white chassis, knobs and switches for all the pedals in the series.
My daughter (the same one who thinks I’m a random - see above) is fairly creative. So I told her which pedal I wanted for Christmas and asked her to get herself and my other kids on the pedal. The “photos” are a bit more than just photos - they look quite funky, but you can’t really tell from the photo of the board. Having your kids on it and the effort she put in, makes it difficult to get rid of if I don’t like it. However as I’m not good at getting rid of stuff, I think this is low risk .
I quite like the distortion pedal which has wide range of gain sounds. I’m currently using it more as an overdrive, but experimenting with it, in particular how it and the Bad Monkey work together.
The compressor (blue boss one) was given to me by an ex band mate. He hadn’t used it for 3 years and knows I’m a compressor user on bass. It kills 2 birds for me (a Boss Pedal and a compressor). It’s okay but a bit noisy and (for me) there’s not enough compressor function knobs. I’m not sure it works too well with the distortion - probably because the distortion is also compressing. So it’s either not an always on (which my bass one is) or I need to dial back the compression in it. I suspect it will get replaced with a TC Electronics Hypergravity (the one I use for bass).
@mattswain I agree re the design flaw. It has puzzled me a bit since I bought one for my bass (my 1st board). But I got it for a good price (at least for one with a hard case), it’s a decent size (bigger than my bass one) and I’d a fair idea I could mod it even with my limited skills. I don’t think I’d recommend it to others though without telling them about the limitations on power supply.
). I largely went with his suggestions for the Ist iteration of the board.
).
. I quite like the rise though. Also the DC7 is easily expandable to an additional 4 or 8 outputs, so I think it was probably a good result.
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