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I need pedalboard advice


theflyingturtle

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Awesome Dub. Thanks for the offer. I have about 8 pedals. I have a wah, a vibe in a wah pedal form, several fuzzes, and a reverb pedal. The wah, vibe, and the reverb pedal are all larger that a standard stompbox and I believe might require a larger board but, as of this writing, this is uncharted territory for me. The board will be furniture at home since I don't gig or play in a band. I don't even think I need a case for the pedalboard. Right now I have read about so many options that my head is spinning. Do I get one with a power source or should I add one later? Velcro or zipties? What size board sounds about right? In other words, what are the suggestions or opinions of those that have already completed their boards for someone who is just starting to put things together? Thanks.

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Guest Farnsbarns

If it's going to be furniture you should look at what atlas stands are doing. Some beautiful stuff including pedal boards.

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i also have used a few different pedal train boards. in my experience you won't want ALL your pedals on the board at once. i have several kinds of dirt, plus overdrive and fuzz. on my board at any one time is only one type of dirt, and fuzz. when i use my rotary, i don't need my chorus on the board too, because they both cover the same ground. decide which pedals you want on the board and size by that. as for power, everyone seems to like the voodoo labs stuff. you may have a few 18v pedals, and you'll need to know which ones you'll be running before you buy the power supply. afaik they all support one, but to do more than one you may need to buy an adapter. i have no 18v pedals, only run 1-2 at a time, and there are only 5 in total. i use a power-all. it's sort of like a one-spot only not crappy. if you don't already have one, buy a good tuner for your board. a polytune is the best bang for your buck. super accurate, easy to use and see, inexpensive. clip on tuners suck, no matter what anyone says, they aren't as accurate as a good strobe tuner. i have tested several. you want the tuner first in your chain, so you can use it as a silence switch, and to be sure it hears unmodified signal straight from your instrument. my board goes tuner > dirt/od > fuzz > rotary or chorus > delay or reverb > amp.

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Making a pedalboard is frustrating for me. I think I've nailed it down to a Holey Board Wide or a Pedaltrain 3. I have never had either so I can't decide. I have a TC Nova Reverb that runs on 12v 300ma. This complicates the power supply and I am unsure if I should buy a power source that can accommodate this pedal as well or just get and entirely different reverb pedal! I can't decide. I was hoping to take care of this this weekend, not make a bunch of decisions that I don't have the experience to make. Help? I am almost ready to jump in the car and run to Home Depot and get some plywood!

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Making a pedalboard is frustrating for me. I think I've nailed it down to a Holey Board Wide or a Pedaltrain 3. I have never had either so I can't decide. I have a TC Nova Reverb that runs on 12v 300ma. This complicates the power supply and I am unsure if I should buy a power source that can accommodate this pedal as well or just get and entirely different reverb pedal! I can't decide. I was hoping to take care of this this weekend, not make a bunch of decisions that I don't have the experience to make. Help? I am almost ready to jump in the car and run to Home Depot and get some plywood!

I have a couple of Gator pedalboards that I put together. They were relatively cheap and came with cases.

Going to Home Depot is not a bad idea. If you look at the ones they build from wood, it's not a lot of work really.

And then you can make it exactly the way you want it. [thumbup]

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I have a Holeyboard and I like it for the most part. The only thing I don't like is having to use zip ties instead of Velcro. Every time you move something around, you have to cut the zip ties and use new ones, plus they don't hold the pedals in place as well as Velcro. I suppose you could use Velcro on the Holeyboard instead of zip ties if you wanted to.

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Awesome Dub. Thanks for the offer. I have about 8 pedals. I have a wah, a vibe in a wah pedal form, several fuzzes, and a reverb pedal. The wah, vibe, and the reverb pedal are all larger that a standard stompbox and I believe might require a larger board but, as of this writing, this is uncharted territory for me. The board will be furniture at home since I don't gig or play in a band. I don't even think I need a case for the pedalboard. Right now I have read about so many options that my head is spinning. Do I get one with a power source or should I add one later? Velcro or zipties? What size board sounds about right? In other words, what are the suggestions or opinions of those that have already completed their boards for someone who is just starting to put things together? Thanks.

 

I know others have already chimed-in... but here's my take on pedal boards, and what I've learned over the past several years.

 

I used to have a 4-tier Pedaltrain 2, which held around 8 pedals. I powered it with a VooDoo Labs Pedal Power + 2—which I had to drill into the bottom of my board to attach. Although it was an excellent set-up, it turned out to be one heavy mother! Too much to lug around with a guitar. Not only that, but the daisy-chain power connectors easily became a big tangled mess underneath the board.

 

So, I recently switched over to the smaller, more compact, Pedaltrain Metro. I power it with a Truetone 1-Spot power supply. Way lighter and easier to manage, as the 1-Spot powers the pedals with an AC adapter—no heavy power unit to install! If you use George L patch cables (you make them yourself), 8 pedals will fit comfortably on the smaller board. You don't lose any pedals with the smaller size.

 

Good luck!

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I think pedal boards are a lot like running shoes, you have to find the one that fits your needs appropriately.

 

Err on the side of larger...

 

I have two pedal trains, one (large one) indeed is heavy, the other is a metro. I use the metro at home, the larger one at our rehearsal spot.

 

Agree with the idea that you may not need all on at the same time, why have three fuzz pedals taking up space? just put the one you like the most on the board? not sure if that is the plan.

 

If you go with the larger pedal train, you will be able to put the power supply under the board, saving real estate on the top.

 

Then if you go with something like a Voodoo Lab PS it has a courtesy plug, you can use that to power up anything that won't work with the standard power ports in the power supply.

 

Where this is not going to be moved much, if it's stationary, and will always be setup and ready to go, then maybe you don't need anything more than a house extension cord

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I built one outta white oak 16x48,weighs 30 lbs without the 18 pedals and 2 voodoo pedal power bricks. I could drive my pickup up on it to change oil.

 

Cripes - that's 4ft long..... :o

 

 

Pedalboards....changing them around is part of the fun IMO.

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Making a pedalboard is frustrating for me. I think I've nailed it down to a Holey Board Wide or a Pedaltrain 3. I have never had either so I can't decide. I have a TC Nova Reverb that runs on 12v 300ma. This complicates the power supply and I am unsure if I should buy a power source that can accommodate this pedal as well or just get and entirely different reverb pedal! I can't decide. I was hoping to take care of this this weekend, not make a bunch of decisions that I don't have the experience to make. Help? I am almost ready to jump in the car and run to Home Depot and get some plywood!

 

 

EDIT NEVERMIND I just noticed that was 300MA NOT 200MA

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I want to thank EVERYONE that posted advice! I was ready to jump off a cliff. Yesterday I visited my local shops, continued my research, and fiddled with the pedals I came to a decision; I can't rush it. I am going to build my own with my Kreg Jig. It will be two tiered and I already have a strong mental picture of what it will look like and know exactly how it will be constructed. I will use cheap lumber, try out my ideas, and then finalize what it is I want in a pedalboard. I found it impossible to make a decision when I had no schema to draw from. However, now I have two questions that I feel are significant. First, it turns out that I have several pedals that either need a special power plug or 12 volts. I could get by with a 1 Spot and a power strip to plug the pedals that need their own power source or I could replace the odd pedals with 9 volt versions and just use a ! Spot daisy chain. Any advice on building a pedalboard around the power needs? The other question is that since the inputs on the pedals travels from right to left, what do I do when I get to the end of the pedalboard and have to begin a new row? Get a long cable to reach the next tier? I hope that last question was phrased correctly.

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... First, it turns out that I have several pedals that either need a special power plug or 12 volts. ...

 

Check out the current available power supplies. Many will be able to handle a 12v pedal and the high power requirements you mentioned before.

 

 

The other question is that since the inputs on the pedals travels from right to left, what do I do when I get to the end of the pedalboard and have to begin a new row? Get a long cable to reach the next tier?

 

Yes, the best answer is to custom cut/size your cable with something like George L's or one of their competitors. The alternative is to buy a longer cable and bundle any extra under with cable ties (which you will likely do with the power cables anyway once your pedal ordering is sorted).

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first worry about the pedals you'll use on the board. once you have that sorted out, then you can decide what board you need and what kind of power supply will work best for you.

alot of people buy & sell pedals regularly/often because they are searching for a device with a specific quality. if you have found the pedals that make the sound you want, that's the hardest part of the battle right there. breathe easier just for that. i've known guys who've tried dozens of pedals, just for dirt, until they found what worked best for them. i myself have had 3 different chorus pedals and 4 different roto-vibes until i finally settled on one each that i like. go to the gear page and look thru their pedal board thread. some guys take things waaayyyyy to far.

 

the one piece of advice i can guarantee is the for sure absolute right answer every single time, is this one thing:

 

in the entire history of the world, no one has ever built a better fuzz pedal that the firey red horse. it's entirely possible - even likely - that no one ever will.

anyone who isn't using one now, is only doing so because they haven't tried one yet, and don't know any better..

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I want to thank EVERYONE that posted advice! I was ready to jump off a cliff. Yesterday I visited my local shops, continued my research, and fiddled with the pedals I came to a decision; I can't rush it. I am going to build my own with my Kreg Jig. It will be two tiered and I already have a strong mental picture of what it will look like and know exactly how it will be constructed. I will use cheap lumber, try out my ideas, and then finalize what it is I want in a pedalboard. I found it impossible to make a decision when I had no schema to draw from. However, now I have two questions that I feel are significant. First, it turns out that I have several pedals that either need a special power plug or 12 volts. I could get by with a 1 Spot and a power strip to plug the pedals that need their own power source or I could replace the odd pedals with 9 volt versions and just use a ! Spot daisy chain. Any advice on building a pedalboard around the power needs? The other question is that since the inputs on the pedals travels from right to left, what do I do when I get to the end of the pedalboard and have to begin a new row? Get a long cable to reach the next tier? I hope that last question was phrased correctly.

 

There are special converters for those "reverse polarity" pedals. My Fulltone '69 Fuzz is one of those. Typically, they have red plug ends.

 

Keep your pedals, and simply get enough of these converters to power them in your daisy chain.

 

[thumbup]

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When I was looking for a power supply I had two pedals with special needs. One was Orange's Bax Bangeetar and the other the ehx Cathedral, the first sounds much better with 12V and the other needed 200mA. After some research there were only two high quality brands to choose from: Voodoo Labs and Cioks.

I ended up buying the Cioks Pu$$y Power because it had everything I needed at the moment and it would also take care of all future needs.

Isolated outputs, silent and built like a tank. You might want to take a look.

The DC10 is a very good option.

 

http://cioks.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Itemid=59

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