Hey, do I really need to buy an expensive pedal board?

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6/27/2003 10:28 PM

Dylan

Hey, do I really need to buy an expensive pedal board? Hi all, I love this site so much!     I was wondering what to do with my effect pedals. Right now I don't have a power supply but I want to have one. I don't really feel like spending a lot of money on a pedal board with power, but instead I wanted to make a 6 output power "strip" and put that on my existing pedal board. Is it worth the work, or should I go and buy a pedal board? Thanks.

 

6/27/2003 11:06 PM
nic	depending on how much time you have on your hands... D.I.Y. is always worth it. It is something that our culture is lacking a lot of anymore. TAKE A SICK DAY AND DO IT!     nic

 

7/2/2003 7:46 AM
WyoMan	No.

 

7/2/2003 2:35 PM

Mark Hammer

Depends on what you stick on the pedal board. They are certainly not all based on the assumption that you will have a line-up of 8 BOSS or DOD pedals on a row, but there are also some fairly exotic combinations they can't handle. For instance, if you have some sort of master loop switcher, you'll need room to run send-return cables from/to the loop switcher box. If you have any homebrew effects that use +/-9v (or more) then you'll need to have a way to provide it. Same goes for pedals that use a positive ground (usually anything that uses germanium transistors) or use more than 9vdc. There ARE commercially available power supplies and DIY kits that can do that but at that point you are beyond any all-on-one-board commercial solution.     One of the advantages of a DIY solution is that you can plan out the routing of power cords and keep them mercifully short and out of the way . For instance, one perennial problem is side-mounted power jacks on wahs (why *don't* they mount them on the front/toe-end of the pedal?). Having a long thin "power distribution bar" with a series of jacks at the far side of your board will let you pick the nearest access point and run a short unobstrusive power cord from bar to pedal. If you want, you can even stick in some *clearly marked* jacks for bipolar power or reverse polarity power. Hell, you can even have a switch here and there that would let you take a master 12v regulated supply and drop it down to 9v (or less) at the local level so that pedals which can work fine (or even better) at 12v get what they need, and those that work best at lower voltages get what *they* need.     But, like I say, if your pedal complement is a fairly standard one, a commercial pedal-board may well be a terrific set-up.

 

8/6/2003 5:07 PM
Paul M.	Build Your Own... I built my own. Check it out:     http://home.att.net/~paulnkim/NewPedalBoard.html     I love it!     PJM

 

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