Building the better pedalboard...

[Rickenjangle]

As I have run out of room on my current Gator pedalboard, I ordered the bigger one. Well, it came in, and it's quite a bit bigger than the one I have. Plus, it's got room for a second power supply, which I may take from my smaller board.

Which started like this:



And when I got the Gator, looked like this (except for the replacement of the Small Stone with a Phase 90):



Anyhoo...

I was wondering - does anyone make extenders for the 9v and 18v power supplies? I have a one-spot that has a 10' cable, but the wall warts that come with the Gator power supplies come with a measley 6'. Frankly, I am sick of running an extension cord and a power strip up to the front of the stage all the time...

I know that pedalsnake makes stuff like this, but you have to buy their stuff at a premium. I just need cables that have the male and female cannon ends, about 12 feet each. Then all my power can be run off one big power strip at the back of the stage.

[Mesotech]

I recently purchased one of these:



SKB StageFive Pedalboard
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SKBPS55/

Plenty of room, plenty of power, built in cable tester and headphone amp, case top is deep enough to allow me room to store my home made snake which runs back to the amp inside the case with the pedals, and I've found a nice long power cable that plugs right into the board (eliminating for the most part the need for yet another extension cord and power strip). A relatively expensive, but elegant solution.

[chuckocaster]

i made my own, peice of wood and some carpet. i use a voodoo lab pedal power 2, and bought a 10-12 ft IEC cable to use with it. that power cable usually reaches to somewhere on side stage or close enough to the back for me to power the thing.

[Kap'n]

Doormat works as well as carpet, probably more rugged, and is less expensive.

[chuckocaster]

yeah, this is the runner carpet you can buy at home depot.

[Rickenjangle]

Well, I spent the better part of the evening putting this thing together. It seems so much bigger than my other one, but I'd be hard-pressed to put another pedal in there.



The only thing I couldn't do was power the DOD (the pointillistic pedal on the left) because I didn't have the right kind of connector. I'll power that one with a new cable adapter (and splitter) from my one-spot.

I was able to power all the other pedals with the gator power supply, which provides 8 9-volt cannon-style plugs - but the darned DOD uses the 1/8" mini-plug. And I tried to power it from the tuner but for some reason that didn't work.

So...off to Radio Shack I go.

To my surprised pleasure, the board is no noisier with the extra pedals on it...unless I start to pile up the overdrives, but then again, that happened before, too.

Ground control to Major Tom!

[Rickenjangle]

Oh yeah...the signal flow is:

Guitar => Dunlop Crybaby => TS9 RI => SD-1 => Little Big Muff => LPB-1 => DOD Overdrive Preamp 250 => TU-2 Tuner => TR-2 Tremolo => MXR Phase 90 => DD20 GigaDelay => Amp(s).

Wow!

[Kap'n]

That funky pixilated box is a DOD 250?

I had one of those when I was a kid. I hated it. It didn't distort enough.....

Of course, given the equipment I had, distortion was a good thing.

[Rickenjangle]

Yup, Kap'n it is...I took some Testors model paint to it...was going for a Georges Seurat look. It's got that old-marshall vibe going for it. Sounds nice and toothy. If I can't get it to power up from the wall, though, I'm going to have to replace it with my BYOC Tri-booster.

[Gris]

I keep trying to go smaller - expand/contract, expand/contract - a never-ending cycle. A while back I cut a piece of 3/4 ply to just fit inside a reg size suitcase (most of my gigs are out of town) and covered it in ugly gray-brown indoor/outdoor carpet. My tuner, delay, TS808 clone, opto-compressor and A/B/Y have stayed on there. Fuzz and wah come and go. Various other things have come and stayed gone: reverb pedal, envelope filter, etc. I'm REALLY trying to get it down to a better delay and just one multi-function/level OD/distortion, w/ the wah a sometimes option. But, I haven't quite dialed in this 'new' amp rig yet. It never ends... ;-)

[Mesotech]

I keep trying to go smaller - expand/contract, expand/contract - a never-ending cycle. A while back I cut a piece of 3/4 ply to just fit inside a reg size suitcase (most of my gigs are out of town) and covered it in ugly gray-brown indoor/outdoor carpet. My tuner, delay, TS808 clone, opto-compressor and A/B/Y have stayed on there. Fuzz and wah come and go. Various other things have come and stayed gone: reverb pedal, envelope filter, etc. I'm REALLY trying to get it down to a better delay and just one multi-function/level OD/distortion, w/ the wah a sometimes option. But, I haven't quite dialed in this 'new' amp rig yet. It never ends... ;-)

And it never does.
But that's part of the fun.

[chuckocaster]

fun but also sometimes a headache. i usually contract, and then go, "you know it'd be cool if i put..." then i'm back to a big ole board for awhile.

who cares though, music is supposed to be fun. when that stops, i'll stop playing.

[Rickenjangle]

Well, not too many of us ever get to the level of mmquain...as it is, I think I'm in for a bit of head scratching, trying to match levels of all my overdrives for unity gain.

Believe it or not, I'm thinking perhaps of getting a Fulldrive II to use as my only pedal with Crossfyre...too much tap dancing otherwise...

[Franklin]

I think I'm in for a bit of head scratching, trying to match levels of all my overdrives for unity gain.

Yup. It seems to change from night to night and also where you have the volume knobs set on the guitar. That's one reason so many people stay with the vol knob up all the way and use boost pedals.

I had a FD2, great pedal! But they are just another Tube Screamer pedal with a boost. I liked stacking my SD1 and my DGTM (another TS varient) together. I ran out of room and replaced them both with a Zendrive, which is okay.

For carpets, I found rubber lined bath or kitchen mats to work best!!

[Rickenjangle]

OK, I took it to my first practice. (by the way, I got the right cable for the DOD overdrive from one-spot. I had a nifty cable to split the 1-spot into 2 outs, and then this great little widget.) So, with the power issue sorted, I plugged 'er all in. At the church's practice space, I usually get a lot of rf interference noise with my earlier Gator board, but this board is dead-quiet when all pedals are off - and when they're on they're no noisier than you'd expect when more than 1 overdrive is on at one time. I think that perhaps I had everything on the smaller board too close together.

Now, the real fun begins...my gain structures are all over the map. I'm used to cascading the TS9 into the SD1 and (even though it can be noisy) using the LPB1 for boost. Now, for some reason, the TS9 and SD1 don't seem to have as much volume, as compared to unity (straight through). The clean sound is just as bright and punchy as ever. I'm thinking that the Big Muff is acting as kind of a limiter or something, 'cause the TS9 with gain low and level high should rip my face off.

Anyway, the big - and very welcome - surprise is how great the DOD pedal sounds on its own in this situation. With my LP or SG I can get a great Black Sabbath sound, and with my Strat or Tele I can get a nice Bad Company Plexi Marshall sound. You can have the gain knob all the way down and just compensate with the level. Sounds grrrreat!

The only thing is that I might need to ditch the low-wattage, small-speaker, solid-state amps for one higher-watt, 12" speaker - more hi-fi amp, like the Fender stage 1000 "Porch Weasel." Or maybe a Valvestate Marshall. I just need clean power when using all these pedals.

Dunno. I think I'm just going to let this sit for a spell, and see what's working before I commit to anything new.

Anyway, I'm very happy with my pedal setup now. Yee-haw!

RJ

[Rickenjangle]

I moved the Big Muff to the front of the chain of overdrives, right after the Crybaby, and the sound of the TS9 and SD1 pedals got immediately better. I might end up needing to put that one in a loop, since it seems to dislike playing with others. It's kind of a 1-trick pony. One really good trick, though.

The pedalboard really sounded good this week at church. I'm totally digging the Boss Tremolo pedal - easy to dial in watery swells or hard chop and it sounds really nice and warm. Not quite as loud as bypass, but still very good. I hear there's a mod that can be done to give the pedal a bit more 'oomph' though. Might be a fun little DIY project.

[chuckocaster]

sounds like things are coming together.

i was soldering on one of my big muffs last night. now alls i have to do is wire in the switch. long story, but it was a total basket case. when that one is up and running it'll be numero 3.

[Rickenjangle]

Do your big muffs clip everything that comes into them? I tried to use the TS9, set to low gain and high volume, to boost the Big Muff and found nothing but elephant-fart tone.

Actually, whether before or after, any boost in volume (whether clean or distorted) caused this effect. I think the big muff likes to be the only clipping device in the chain. It's great at what it does, but pretty much causes my guitars to be synth/distortion triggering devices. I'm used to overdrives, so this is something new to get used to...

[chuckocaster]

i don't know i always run them first. i think it's a "fuzz" deal cause i was always told to run fuzzes first in the chain.

[1958lpjr]

Hey Rickenjangle ,
Why didn't you use the Boss Tuner for a power supply with a Boss multi tap cable?

[Rickenjangle]

It only worked with certain pedals - plus, I'd have needed to power IT with a one-spot, since the absolute maximum that can be powered from a single output on the Gator/8 power supply is 200 mA. In fact, on my first Gator, I blew an input component on the power supply because the DD20 is such an incredible power-hog.