New pedalboard build and some creativity....

My original pedalboard was home-made out of wood (laying around in the garage,) glue, duralock, spraypaint and a fence gate handle. It had been feeling a bit cramped but I just didn't want to spend the money on a commercial built board - rather spend money elsewhere. Here is the old board and its pre-disassembly mess:




A better look at the old board after retirement. Engineering wise, I think I did well enough - the center support with judiciously placed pass-through holes for wires helped a lot with "stomp flex" and cabling, but it was as much a mess below as it was above, my only real lament about it; and that I felt a bit space constrained. The loop switcher moved me into "large board" size, prompting this original board build and I have no regrets, but the switcher takes up pedal space so the board size was necessary (24x18 here.) Too bad that duralock forest on there can't easily be reclaimed....



I found this pedal train pro (with tour case,) barely used, for about the price of a new boss delay pedal and I just could not pass that up.



Assembly with this would make things easy but my power supply, a walrus audio phoenix, has no good mounting option for pedaltrain boards, at least that I or sweetwater could find - there is a universal kit but it did not look like it would fit well. So I got a $5 piece of aluminum flat bar and went to work.



A pair of vice grips functioned as my aluminum brake and the rest was pretty simple. The bends and cuts aren't stellar, but they are close enough and it is tight. I have dura-lock between the bottom edge of the supply and the board itself, so it shouldn't be going anywhere. In the old board, it was mounted with double-sided tape and plastic hvac hanger strap with lathe screws - I was using what I had in the garage.

My main concern here is the pedal power cables plugging in while it was mounted in place - didn't think I had room at first but it is just enough for them to get in there. I like the PS but I wish they spaced the jacks a bit more - those plugs are tight against each other when it is fully used.

Thought I'd share the project....maybe someone finds something useful....will post a few more pictures on the thread as it comes further together.

 

Progress thus far....1st pass - some rearranging still to do...

Definitely more room, but cabling still a bit messy at the moment. The large right angle plugs (easily seen on the Dual Overdrive / SD-2 ) make placement and neatness a little more difficult - have to leave room for them. That will be my next upgrade - all low profile plugs/cables. I am thinking I will buy an assortment of all pre-made low/flat profile patch cables, but I wouldn't mind reusing the mogami 2314 currently on the board - just need to find the right plugs, solderless would be great, but I'll break out the iron if I have to.

The most important addition to the board is docked on the Aluminum Falcon (that klon looking pedal, bottom right) It now holds a Millenium Falcon bottle opener - this allows me to get my finger runs under 10 parsecs...

Still need to load up the Fat Sandwich and I have power/loop for one more pedal - deciding who/what that will be or if it remains open as the guest spot. Board has 11 loops, 15 power feeds.

Fox catcher (signal start) and Aluminum Falcon are all pre-loop as I leave them on most of the time - I occasionally have to turn one or the other off if a fuzz pedal complains, but it conveniently allows two more pedals on the looper as well.

 

It is a programmable loop switcher. I can use it to turn pedals (each loop) on/off individually, much like you would do with just individual pedals. The programmable aspect of it is that I can change modes (footswitch, far bottom right of switcher, blue pill is single pedals, red pill is presets) and turn on/off banks of pedals - just a way of doing presets, but I can actually program which groups of pedals turn on for any of 11 presets, which is plenty for me.

One could buy something like a boss gt-1000, line6 helix, etc., and achieve the exact same thing, functionally. I found that I prefer to use individual pedals as it gave me more flexibility and allowed me to choose what I want for overdrive, distortion, chorus, delay, etc., and not be limited to what the multi-fx designer dreamed up.

I have tried multi-fx before and while they can sound quite good, they did not inspire me. While this is more complicated, and more costly, the flexibility to me is worth it.

Full disclosure: I found the loop switcher for a stupid price used - I don't think I would have considered it otherwise. Having done that now, I can't go back - I won't. If that unit dies and can't be fixed reasonably, it will get replaced with a GigRig or the like.