18 Inch Pedal Board

As promised I've got a few pictures to share of my last and bigger pedal board. This one is 18 inches long as opposed to my original 14 inch board that just holds 3 regular sized pedals, this bigger one holds 4 regular sized pedals, You could also get a few more spots on the board if you used some mini pedals which are becoming more popular these days. I learned a little something new today while watching a video with Brad Wampler and a couple of his guys. Brad says the more digital circuit pedals you run on a daisy chained power system, the louder of a hissing noise will be produced. In my own case there's no problem with the pedals I'm daisy chaining together. That could be partially due to the Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor I'm running. If you're going to run pedals, especially several of them it might be best to think about an isolated power source for your pedals. Of course you'll be looking a quite a price increase too. You can get a One Spot for around 20 dollars and an extra 7 or 8 dollars will get you a jumper wire for powering up to 5-7 different pedals. Below you'll see the newest pedal board all set to go, This is a front view of the board and you can see how the patch cables just found a home of their own and sit nicely inside and under the top of the board. I also used a 1x6 bottom on this board as opposed to the 1/4" plywood on my 14 inch board. Its crossed my mind to put a cover over the front but I don't see a useful purpose for it other than cosmetics. With this set up I still have another power plug in my daisy chain line for powering a wah pedal or something else that's bigger. Wah pedals are made to sit as flat as possible and the more area they cover the more stable the pedal will be. I'd need a little bigger board for my Dunlop Cry Baby but I can also just set it on the floor beside my pedal board and it would work just fine that way.

And there you have your top view of the pedal board. I actually like the way this turned out because of the way the finish ended up being on it. I sprayed it with flat black paint. When it dried it felt like sandpaper, so I used a brown Scotchbrite pad on it and smoothed it out. Naturally it took the paint off in spots but it had a used  look about it. I hit those spots again with some more flat black and smoothed it out again with the Scotchbrite pad.  It just has a used look about it while still being a brand new board. I am totally making these boards out of 1x4's and 1x6's in white pine lumber.White Pine is easier to work with, its softer than yellow pine and doesn't tend to warp as much as yellow pine. The board is not heavy despite using the thicker overkill bottom I used. I'm sure it is a little stronger than my first one with the 1/4" bottom on it. But this board is strictly glued together using Gorilla Wood Glue and its pretty damn strong.

I've got a 14 inch board in the works and its close to being put together now. I'll get some pictures in the different joints I'm gluing  and we'll catch up there. I'm thinking of maybe using a Hammered looking paint or maybe camo or something wild. In the mean time, check out this short video from Brad Wampler and friends discussing ways to power these pedal boards. The pedals you see hooked up here have no hiss or any kind of noise at all. A lot of that could be because of the noise suppressor I run. I think I only have one pedal that might qualifiy for "digital" and that would be my Digitech Screamin' Blues Driver but other than that my pedals are not noisy like pedals were 30 years ago. If I get what I have I mind to get I'll probably sideline my blues driver before long anyway. I've got my mind about set on a Wampler Ego Compressor. I know there's cheaper compressors out there but I already own one Wampler pedal and love it. Brad Wampler is a guitar player himself who happens to be an electrical engineer genius dude. I've been around rockin' since the 70's and one thing about it, the effects pedals industry has gotten so much better than back in those days. All those old pedals had tons of hiss in them no matter how you hooked then up.

Anyway, take a look at this short 5 minute video from Wampler Pedals and get the low down on powering your board. Especially if you want something twice the size of mine. I could carry my 14 inch board around in my gig case. My 18 inch board isn't going to go inside my gig bad so there's yet another thing to think about on the 18 inchers. I make even build some bigger ones capable of holding 10 or 12 pedals. Something like that would require you to invest in one of those VooDooLabs type Power Conditioners. With the price of 9 volt batteries these days you're money ahead if you can power your whole board from one unit even if it does cost you a hundred dollars or more. It doesn't take that much to run through those 9 volt batteries when you're gigging

Simple Pedal Board - DIY Cheap And Nice

Okay folks, I hope everyone had a good weekend. I took it pretty easy still recovering from being sick and all but I feel a little better today. I actuality felt like doing something today and I haven't felt that way in a couple of weeks. I managed to get a little time in at my shop this afternoon late. Its still like an oven outside here in SW Arkansas but that's pretty normal for late July. It gets a little hotter before it cools off a little. A lot of people tend to stay inside as much as possible during July and August around here because its just too hot to want to get out and do anything. If you want to mow this time of year its best to have some headlights on your riding mower because the only time it gets cool enough to mow is close to dark thirty.

But back to the pedal board .... The one I've chosen to build and show picture progress with is a 14" pedal board. That just means its 14 inches long. Just right for holding 4 normal size pedals like the Boss TU-3 tuner pedal for instance. Personally, I have a Boss TU-3 Tuner on my board but you can always get a good clip on tuner and use that spot for something else. I pedal I will always keep on my board, and always last in line, is a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor. That was the very last pedal I bought and probably the best pedal I ever bought. I also have on my board a Wampler Brad Paisley Overdrive Signature Pedal. I've always been a little tight when it came to buying pedals. I've always actually had a little something against using them at all. I love the sound of a good guitar plugged into a good tube amplifier. Nothing beats it when you have a person operating the guitar that's pretty damn good at playing it. Something else about that, it keeps you on your toes and keeps you honest. The cleaner you play, the more telling you are of your skills. If you're a sloppy player who rely's on pedals to get by, you're probably not going to have a good time. Just sayin'

So the pedal board .... I took a 1x4 piece of pine and cut it into two strips about an inch and a half wide using a table saw. I had already cut my 1x4 to 14 and a quarter inches beforehand with finishing the length on my miter saw.to 14 inches + I put the plus mark in there as to mean about a sixteenth of an inch over isn't a bad thing. We'll see why when we get to the end of the project. So, yeah, keep in mind to feel free to add a sixteenth of an inch to that 14 inch finish we want to come out with, Its really freakin' cool what we'll do here, trust me.

Everyone pretty much knows a 1x4 isn't actually one inch, right? Its more like .750 inches or 3/4"
The 4 isn't 4 inches either. Its more like 3 1/2" or 3.500" ......... so I set my saw guide at around 1 1/2" to 1 5/8" and ran the 2x4 through twice. Using the straightest side against the guide and then using the cut side of the left over (wider) piece run it through the saw again and you'll have two pieces from 1 1/2" to 1 5/8" wide. That's a good width because it provides plenty of room between the pedals to work your patch cords. You can also buy a roll of Velcro from Wal-Mart or wherever else you might find Velcro. What I use for my boards is 1 inch wide, black, and has a very sticky back on it. You can get a 1" by 36" roll of it for about 8 dollars by the time you pay tax on it.

As you can see above I have my main 4 pieces laid out in separated pieces. The ones in the middle are the 14 inch + 1x1 1/2" boards. The angled pieces were made using a 1x6 standard piece of pine and setting my miter saw at 10 degrees. I don't actually measure anything when I make this cut. I use a piece of my miter saw to "eyeball" it where I want it to be and it comes out at about 1/2 - 3/4 inch at the small end. Depending on how I chose to eyeball it I guess. Keep in mind I was just making this up as I went along. I just happened to measure it later so I could reproduce it if I wanted to. After I give them all an initial sanding I will put some Gorilla Wood glue to them and carefully piece them together while clamping them into place for an overnight stay. On my first pedal board I used wood screws, but in hindsight I think its a little overkill. I used nothing but glue on the 18 inch pedal board I made and I think its probably fine that way. But I am thinking about sticking some finishing nails in it just for good measure. After I pre-drill the holes of course. You don't want to split the wood. You want to drill the hole just a little under size so you get a good grip with the finishing nail. Squirting a little glue in the hole with a syringe ain't a bad idea either. Another old carpenter trick I learned a long time ago was to tap the sharp end of your nail with your hammer a couple of times to dull the end of the nail a little. Its keeps from splitting the wood, trust me ;)

And this is how it will set together once we get it sanded and glued. I'll try my best to make that happen tomorrow evening-night sometime. On my first pedal board I used a piece of 1/4" plywood for the bottom piece. It gotten the job done quite well on several gigs after I built it. Before that I was laying them side by side in the floor poor boy style. You can still consider this pedal board "poor boy style" I guess. I've seen a lot of these pedal boards people pay a lot of money for and to me, it ain't worth it. Especially when you have the means to build your own. I'm more set up for working with steel in my shop. It is a small machine shop after all. But I do have some wood working tools. I've got a few more things I'd like to have but I'm working on that. Last but not least is a picture of my first ever home built pedal board, minus the Velcro. I took the Velcro I had on it off so I could put a full strip on it like I did with my last one. Since I had stained it I wanted to show the wood color as much as possible so I just used 2" wide Velcro pieces and cut them into pieces just big enough for each pedal. I also used wood screw in this one and did not try to hide them. The Velcro will cover them anyway when I put a new strip on it.

Pretty simple and straight forward so far. Next we'll look at a front view of this board and you can see where and how I mounted my keeper.holder for the One Spot harness end piece. I used a simple door latch like you might use on a storage shed or even a chicken house door. I think they cost about 2 dollars for a brass one and its perfect size for making a good tight grip on the One Spot jumper harness for you pedal power.

More on this later ... thanks for looking in.

More on Pedals and Pedal Boards

I recently made myself another pedal board. The first one I made would only hold three Boss type regular sized stomp boxes. I never intended to have a pedal board at all, but after I bought my Boss TU-3 Pedal Tuner, well, I suddenly had a pedal. There had been a specific pedal I'd had my eye on for a while but couldn't bring myself to get it. After all, its a signature pedal, and I've got a thing about that,  in fact I could probably write a small book on. But I won't go into that here. The end result is that, I WILL use a signature pedal. Maybe not just any signature pedal, but I will use at least this one.  I got a Wampler Paisley Drive after trying it out a little while and it was pretty much what I thought it might just be. Its a clean boost with a good distortion circuit. Don't get me wrong, its no thrash metal pedal. This thing is more for playing clean guitar sounds. You can put some distortion with it too. It's just right for most of the kinds of music I play. The more Country,Texas Country, Red Dirt leaning stuff is great for the Paisley Drive. Its the perfect pedal for that genre of music. Its great for Blues too, although I feel there are a few out there specifically made for blues that might get the job done a little better. But that's just another personal preference type of thing in my book.

Well hummmm, there's 2 pedals I have now all the sudden. The Paisley Drive made a little bit of noise, though not anywhere near as much as other drive pedals. So I eventually talked myself into a Boss NS-2 Noise Reduction.  And trust me, if you want to run a pedal board, a Boss NS-2 is the way to go. Then, if you must, you can plug in all those old 60's and 70's pedals that were all notorious for noise. Especially when you were using single coil pickups and there happened to be florescent lights overhead.  I have a set of Fender N3 Noisless Pickups in my Telecaster and they still get a little hum out of  fluorescent bulbs when I'm not running my pedal board. They advertise as being without the 60 cycle hum  but they do make a tiny bit of noise. So I know that Boss NS-2 Noise Reduction is still doing its job and then some. For 99 dollars plus tax its a must have pedal on any pedal board.

I started pricing pedal boards at all the big name dealers and for what they were, I just couldn't see the value in the money they were charging. They are basically stamping these things out on high speed presses. And then spot welding and or bolting them together, painting, or powder coating. Some of them attach 4 rubber feet on them. Some boards come with velcro, some come with the board only velcro'd. And most of them come with a cheap case that the zipper lasts about 2 or 3 gigs before the threading starts ripping out.

I had some nice white pine lumber laying around just waiting on something to be built out of it. So naturally one night I was out in my shop looking at the lumber and thinking about guitars etc ,, and said "why not build a pedal board out of this wood"?  I could either "throw one together" that would be about as good as anything else out on the market OR I could even come up with some really cool designs and other things that would make them stand out from the rest.

In my next post I'm going to show you how I built my own pedal boards. I've got a camera reader card to find between now and then but I'll get it done somehow. I'll show you start to finish pictures of how started and how I have already done a little bit R&D on it. I'm also drawing up blueprints and instructions for these in case there arises a need for them again.

So stay tuned .... I've been pretty sick for the past several days and I'm still not up to speed just yet.

~Its All About The Music~