Question: DIY Pedalboard

[ffutterman]

I've decided to build a small pedal board box for myself just to clean up the wiring and what-not for my 3 pedals (compressor, wah, delay). One idea I had was to have a female-to-male instrument cable and use it as sort of an input jack for the whole system. That way, I can give myself a little more leeway in arranging the pedals instead of having to worry about leaving room to plug in the instrument cable.

Would adding that extra cable be cause for concern about signal strength or clarity?

 

[HazMatt810]

If you're using only three pedals, no, that won't be a problem. If you have 25 feet of cable between your bass and board, and the same between your board and amp, then you should be concerned.

If you are building it yourself, you might want to consider a female jack mounted on the side of the board.

 

[line6man]

If you have a passive bass, then the extra cable is going to increase capacitance, causing a loss of high frequency content.

 

[ffutterman]

It's an active/passive, so I could probably just switch to active if worse comes to worse. Another question: I'd like to have just a simple switch to go from either compressor only or compressor plus other effects. Any recommendations for a switch? I was looking at these two:

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[Crater]

Yes, people do this all the time, install input and output jacks on their pedalboards, for exactly the reason you mentioned.

If you have a passive bass, then the extra cable is going to increase capacitance, causing a loss of high frequency content.

Well, this *is* true, but only to a tiny, small degree, and most likely at least one of your pedals is buffered which pretty much negates any "tone suck" concerns.

It's an active/passive, so I could probably just switch to active if worse comes to worse. Another question: I'd like to have just a simple switch to go from either compressor only or compressor plus other effects. Any recommendations for a switch? I was looking at these two:

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No, no, no... Those footswitches are for amplifiers, for switching channels or activating reverb. They won't work for your purpose even with modification. What you are wanting is called a "true bypass looper" and unfortunately they're not really made by any of the big manufacturers, you'll probably have to order one from a boutique pedal builder. But they are super-simple so it should be fairly cheap. What is confusing is that another type of pedal is also referred to as a "looper" and it's something completely different. The kind of looper you want has 4 jacks and no knobs.

 

[Dave W]

Yes, you'll be fine.

 

[ffutterman]

No, no, no... Those footswitches are for amplifiers, for switching channels or activating reverb. They won't work for your purpose even with modification. What you are wanting is called a "true bypass looper" and unfortunately they're not really made by any of the big manufacturers, you'll probably have to order one from a boutique pedal builder. But they are super-simple so it should be fairly cheap. What is confusing is that another type of pedal is also referred to as a "looper" and it's something completely different. The kind of looper you want has 4 jacks and no knobs.[/QUOTE]

Thanks! It's so embarrassing, but I really don't know beans about effects.