Pedal Nerds, wanna show off your DIY pedalboards?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tadpui
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Tadpui

Tadpui

Well-known member
I'm starting to accumulate a collection of guitar stomp boxes. I've started to consider buying a pedalboard, but the price seems to shoot up quickly as the quality goes up marginally. I don't really want to spend $100+ on a pedalboard so I was thinking of building my own. But I'm open to suggestions for good ones to purchase as well.

I know that I've seen threads here where people were building their own and gathering advice on materials and techniques. I've found a few of those threads but I wanted to see if anybody wanted to share their DIY pedalboards in this thread. I'm just looking for ideas about what kind of materials to purchase/scavenge, and what features to realistically try to incorporate. I'm not a woodworker by any means. Come to think of it, I'm not all that handy in general. But I could convert an old suitcase, or use a plank of wood, or glue some strips of wood into a plank, use some good velcro, maybe incorporate a power strip or a 1-Spot.

Portability isnt a huge requirement since I don't gig, but I will probably take it to a friend's house occasionaly.
 

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Oh - it was made with 1 X 2 select pine and 1/2" birch veneered plywood. I got the hardware from DB Little, and bought some industrial velcro from Lowe's and used one side of it to line the bottom.
 
I've done the DIY thing before, and it works to some degree if you're just sitting in your living room. But as soon as you start gigging often throwing an entire band's shit in the back of a van you're going to start having problems fairly immediately.

I bought the Furman SPB-8, which at the time seemed ludicrous to me at $175 bucks, but not only did it keep all my pedals safe and handy, the signal routing and power conditioning are excellent. So excellent, in fact, that I upgraded to the SPB-8 Deluxe (almost 300 bucks) about a year later to get a little more room and a hard shell case. I would never consider gigging without one ever again.

I've played probably 50 gigs with the SPB-8 Deluxe, and setup takes about 2 minutes. I figure I'm willing to pay five bucks a gig for that convenience... it's paid itself off by now.

And if you are going to spend some bank on a pedal board, get the best that money can buy and get it straight the first time. Shitty ones are shitty and will fuck you in the ass repeatedly (without lubrication) time and time again.

pedalboard-1.jpg

The board is...
Korg Pitchblack
MXR Dynacomp
Radial Loopbone:

Line 1:
Digitech Whammy
Fulltone OCD

Line 2:
Catalinbread Ottava Magus (octafuzz)
Moog Ring Modulator

FX Loop:
TC Electronic Nova Delay
 
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starbuck26 said:
I've done the DIY thing before, and it works to some degree if you're just sitting in your living room. But as soon as you start gigging often throwing an entire band's shit in the back of a van you're going to start having problems fairly immediately.
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Not necessarily.

Mine is built to travel and it is built like a tank. I think it could even survive air travel. :eek:
 
Zaphod B said:
Not necessarily.

Mine is built to travel and it is built like a tank. I think it could even survive air travel. :eek:
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Ah. Now I see. Yeah, that does look like it could survive an earthquake. You don't get any noise from having that AC cable running paralell to your cables?

I guess my DIY skills are more backyard than yours. At the very least, if building a board, you should study the designs of the market boards. There's often a few things that you wouldn't think of that will make your life suck later.
 
it might not be DYI, but I think the price is pretty good ! today, there is a "special deal of the day" on musicianfriends, a nice pedal board with a 1 spot combo for 55 US$
 
starbuck26 said:
Ah. Now I see. Yeah, that does look like it could survive an earthquake. You don't get any noise from having that AC cable running paralell to your cables?

I guess my DIY skills are more backyard than yours. At the very least, if building a board, you should study the designs of the market boards. There's often a few things that you wouldn't think of that will make your life suck later.
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That's not an AC cord running parallel to the audio cables - it's just a cable cover for all the DC supply cables from the wall warts. :)

The AC cable for the power strip is coming off the right-hand side of the board - check the pic.
 
Zaphod B said:
That's not an AC cord running parallel to the audio cables - it's just a cable cover for all the DC supply cables from the wall warts. :)

The AC cable for the power strip is coming off the right-hand side of the board - check the pic.
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Oh I see.... very slick indeed.
 
Thanks - I wanted to keep it as tidy as possible, and this is a really cheap and easy way to do it. All the DC cords within that cable keeper are zip-tied to make stuffing them in a little easier.
 
Here's a WAY TOO big 3 tier pedalboard that never made it to the stage:

100_0189.jpg
 
This thread makes we wanna build up a pedal board again. I sold off all my pedals not too long ago except for a few since I wasn't using them...
 
gaud2029 said:
it might not be DYI, but I think the price is pretty good ! today, there is a "special deal of the day" on musicianfriends, a nice pedal board with a 1 spot combo for 55 US$
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Haha, I saw that today and that's what got me thinking about pedalboards. The thing with that SDOTD one is that the pedalboard itself looks pretty flimsy and gets several negative reviews. Since I don't gig around at all, maybe it'd be OK for me though. But I think I'd rather do one myself anyways so I can format it to my liking. But $55 for the board, a 1-spot, and a carry bag is pretty cool.
 
WalterDeAguero said:
This thread makes we wanna build up a pedal board again. I sold off all my pedals not too long ago except for a few since I wasn't using them...
Click to expand...

Same boat...all I use nowdays is an envelope filter...chorus...pitch shifter...and a tech21 GT2...rather minimalist compared to some setups here.
 
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