Pedalboard Modular Customization

[jez79]

Working on a very cool pedalboard customization. I’ll post more as the project nears completion.

I have 4-5 pedals that are useful at every gig:
Tuner
Compressor
Octave
Sansamp bass driver DI

They've been on a Gator pedalboard and powerd by VoodooLabs ISO5 for a while now.

I've had to purchase and use a few more specialized pedals for certain gigs:
bass microsynth for some 80s songs,
flanger,
qballs to get some more voicing options for synth sounds.
The chorus and harmonist are the first pedals I ever got (~20 years ago), but they haven’t served me much. Chorus for some alice in chains, or for melodic. Harmonist has never been used! I tinkered with it at home, but never had a use for it live. It'll be useful for more waveshaping options.

One pedalboard for the every-gig pedals, another for the optional pedals. Sweet. Bring one bag or two. However, some pedals need to go before others. Modulation (chorus&flanger) need to go at the very end, pitch/tracking/envelope I put before compressor. Lots of wires to switch if I bring the second board.
SOLUTION:
1 4PDT switch, 2 stereo ¼” jacks

Underneath the jacks/switch are exposed wires, so I built a little box out of plexiglass and shielded it. It’s on a hinge for access, sealed with bolt and recessed nut.

I’m missing all the ¼” connectors so I have to wait a few days to finish everything and test it out. I was clean and careful with the soldering and connections. I just hope there is no signal degredation from going through the 4PDT switch.
I’ll post pictures of the completed board.

 

[jez79]

Almost done pics coming
Much more silent than i thought it would be, shielding over connector bay worked i guess.
Some trouble with cable building.

Thoughts on effect order?

 

[HolmeBass]

Cool idea! The pedal order makes sense to me, seems pretty "standard" as far as that goes. Nice work.

 

[jez79]

This is frikkin' glorious.
The trouble I had with the cables was that the outside of the plastic of the inner cable (just underneath the shielding mesh) was conductive. Some hard bends or overheating had the conductor touching the outside of the plastic and shorting out. After redoing many cables, there is no real noticeable signal loss going through one or both pedalboards.

I also changed the slider swtich to a footswitch. The slider I had wasn't very sturdy and fell apart several times. The footswitch will also allow easier turning the secondary board signal on/off.

Main pedalboard:

Secondary pedalboard:

Using newly acquired skills working with plexiglass, I constructed a guard for the bass microsynth. The little sliders seemed too fragile to leave without a guard of some sort.

It Lives!!!!

 

[jez79]

Video demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04dwbTbu_E8

 

[jez79]

Some changes:

These are queued for a bass/or/guitar synth board that will connect between the two smaller ones above. Pre and post filter loops via homemade cables/switchbays

(missing but ordered: IE sub, poly, franta)
(hoping to add: WMD geiger counter, EHX ravish sitar (for brassy hornish sound), EQD arpanoid (maybe bit commander but i'll have square waves covered with mothership&geiger counter), some delay (TC flashback?), some reverb (IE nimbus?), multi channel blender, voodoo mondo power source. just started second job ...)
Will be used for chiptune recordings like this (this lacks any synthing):

 

[Feral Feline]

Way cool boards mang! Ruv it.

 

[jez79]

I'd love to hear suggestions on delay and reverb..

I plan to run the synth board in the blue channel, all tone/voice/synth going before the filters, then through compressor, then modulation, then delay and reverb.

I'd like all purpose delay and reverb, equally good on guitar or bass..
Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[jasonmitsch]

Line6 m5 could cover your delay and reverb for about $100 used, on top of doing a lot of other synthy fun things.

A more expensive option is an eventide h9. Can do way more awesome things though.

If you'd rather have dedicated pedals, the source audio dimension reverb is top notch.

For delay the TC flashback sounds like a good option.