The ‘Handy Tips’ Pedal board building
Snagged this from TGP forums I wanted to archive this. I do not agree with all of this , but it has some great points that help keep us going in the right direction.
The first law of pedalboards: Anything than can break or fail, will in time, break or fail!!
Cables:
- Cables- the most overlooked thing on a pedalboard. Buy good quality, keep as short as poss. DON’T buy anything other than soldered ended cables. (sorry, George L’s but your product falls apart in use and when transported unless you solder it)
- Also, arrange in straight lines with r/a corners to change direction.
- Never coil cables, and especially in ‘one loop’- this will cause induction and hum. This applies to power leads and patch cables
- When planning a board, always add 1.5 inches around the perimeter of each pedal for jacks and ps jacks and to prevent hum via induction
- Never loom midi and audio leads as midi leads can induce noise.
Placement:
- Put the ones you stamp on most at the front.
- If you use a looper, put looped pedals at the back as theoretically you won’t need to stamp on them
- Put power supplies under the board
- Think about comfort- eg if you use a Pedaltrain, often a wah is not comfortable to use at such a steep angle.
- be logical- if you play in one band and always play stage left, then run your input, output and mains leads to accomodate this. If you play in many bands and in different stage places, try an arrangement that gives flexibility.
- Pedal heights- try and use a packer to get the pedals you stamp on at roughly the same height (other wise you’ll tread on setting knobs!)- a 10mm thick piece of MDF covered in velcro both sides is dandy
Other things:
- Putting panel Neutriks on the side of PB- DON”T. You’re adding an extra connector, an extra length of cable, and an extra weak or fail point into your rig. (I fell into this trap)
- Power supplies- make sure any you buy are NOT daisy chained solutions (even if housed in a metal box)- make sure they’re individual PS’s – like a PP2.
- True bypass in isolation, generally, is useless. It relies upon every pedal having matched impedance when on- you’ll get loads of mis-matches. Buffered pedals or loopers with buffer better.
- Get a mains conditioner for the pedals and amps. Pays dividends. Olson are cheap and they rock (and Pete Cornish recommends them).
- Transport- do you need to transport, and if so, how? if you do, wrote a checklist of pedalboard ‘downtaking’ in the bag or lid- like take out all jacks on the periphery of the board before putting flightcase lid on!!!
Chain
Generally:
- Buffer
- Volume (as guitar vol)
- Wah
- Whammy
- Envelopes, Pitch shifters, Auto wahs
- Compressor
- Fuzz
- OD
- Boost
- Volume (as master volume)
- Vibe
- Any other modulation
- Delay
- Reverb
- Leslie sims (especially stereo ones)
I don’t believe a tuner should be in line through choice. Prefer in an isolated loop with a mute function. End of chain best, to prevent ghost noise