Help me build a pedal board

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

I’ve been down the synthesizer rabbit hole, I’ve been down the modular rabbit hole and now I think I’m ready to take the plunge into the effects pedal rabbit hole.

However I know nothing about pedal boards or setting them up or anything.
I found a couple of websites that are basically like Modulargrid.net but for pedal boards, one is called pedal playground and the other is pedal board planner .com. First I want to ask which site would you guys recommend using to plan my pedal board?

Next I’m curious about the basics, Powering everything and which pedals are 100% needed and which pedals do you guys recommend in general?
I’ll be building this pedal board for tons of effects that I can run my synths and other instruments though, Think Jonny greenwood and radiohead in terms of what I’m going for. But I’m also looking to get the most out of it in terms of taking sounds and turning them into soundscapes/mashing and mangling/overall weirdness and also just basic stuff like compression/EQ/Delay etc
Starting out I don’t have a lot of money to invest in the pedal board at the moment but I plan on investing in more and more over time like I did when I was first starting out in modular so I want a pedal board that has a little bit of room to grow but nothing massive. Also I was curious what you guys had for suggestions on cheap pedals too. I plan on adding some more expensive stuff like the eventide pedals and the more specialty ones later when I can but I want to get started with some basics and some fun stuff then add on as I go. Also what are your thoughts on multi-effects pedals? A lot of them seem to do a lot but be the king of nothing though some of them seem cool and useful like the eventide h9.
Anyways all input and suggestions are welcome, I’m starting my research now but I wanted to have feedback from you guys as well.

#2

I’ve never used a pedalboard planner, but for power I’d recommend Strymon: https://www.strymon.net/product-category/power-supplies/. The Zuma packs a lot of juice into a pretty small enclosure, and you can chain them if you need more. I’ve never had a problem with any of mine and I have several spread around my studio.

Another thing to consider is MIDI – especially if you’re looking for pedals to put your synths through, having MIDI control over parameters is awesome. Different manufacturers have different standards, and many pedals operate off 1/4" jacks rather than standard 5-pin DIN jacks for MIDI, so you’ll need a converter. There are lots out there but I’ve found the most versatile to be the Disaster Area MIDI Box: https://www.disasterareadesigns.com/shop/p/midi-box-4. The DIP switches make it really easy to reconfigure so you can use a single box to control pedals from different companies. It also has a thru jack so you can chain them if your board gets really big. Keep in mind that any converter is going to require power, so factor that into your power supply specs.

As for specific pedals and getting basic stuff, are you planning on a stereo or mono rig? For my setup I have pedals to do the weird stuff and leave the EQ, compression, etc. to the onboard effects in my boxes, or the Analog Heat MKII.

#3

Zoom MS70-CDR, tons of FX, enough to get good ones. There are different categories of FX so you can experiment whatever pedal/kind of FX you wanna invest too first.

+100 for pedals with MIDI, it’s a must have if you wanna recall patches, sync your temporal FX and save yourself a lot of hassle.

#4

…oooook, ur obviously aware of the fact, that once it comes to pedal fx, it’s another pandoras’ box…for ur pockets and ur mind…

whatever u wanna use, first money to spent on is a solid multi power supply…
most pedals do the 9volt trick, while others want 12volt…same goes for their needs when it comes to ampere…
if u’d run each of them with their own dedicated powersupply, even a small pedalboard get’s clunky and heavy and a logistic cable mess…so, a solid multi power supply is a must…

and it’s all a bit like modular…whatever u like to chain up…it’s a classic daisy chain in first place…
so one pedal comes first and floods into anything else that’s next to come…puh…
so, a signal splitter for any parralel processing might be another good idea, if u want any flexebilty in signal flow…

distortions better always go first…any reverb or delay is nothing u usally wanna distort afterwards…u see where this is going?

some pedal fx offer a paralelll dry out…always good to have…while most of them just have in and out…no dry/wet ratio setting is forever, so be ready to to fiddle for perfect mixture and balance ALL THE TIME…

end of the day, such a pedal board, including various pedal fx units, do their trick in best fashion if u really know where u wanna go with it sonicwise, which means, ur creating ONE NEW INSTRUMENT that really needs/wants to be actually played by u…

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#5

Unless of course you’re in a shoegaze/zoomergaze band

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#6

What are the pedals for, synthesizer or guitar? And what kind of genres and sounds are you looking to achieve?

IMHO pedals are less useful for synths since you can achieve so many crazy sounds already without them. Guitars have such a stable core sound that they benefit from branching out into all kinds of crazy effects, but sometimes its too much on a synth.

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#7

This way lies madness.

I’ve had a work in progress pedal board (for home use) on the go for years. Planned around switchable loop order, mono (guitar in) and stereo fx (insert in for synths), midi controllable pedals with presets. Home made wooden board and a bag of yet to be united audio cable and jacks. It slowly adds up to flagship synth money.

I concur with the Strymon power supply suggestion above. There’s other good stuff but being able to add these in series is worth it because you will always need more power than you think.

Midi can be a real head scratcher with the different implementations. Morningstar Engineering also make a midi box with internal dipswitches to change each port between different standards. These almost always use trs plugs for midi for pedals, but then a lot also have 5-pin DIN so it can be tricky getting that balance right depending on your pedals chosen.

I think you need a lot of experience to plan and execute a pedal board right first time. There’s a ton of detail to take into account even if you’re not going for perfect cable management and super tight installation.

My suggestion would be to go into it expecting it to be iterative, find the cheapest way you can to stop your pedals moving all over the place as you experiment. Once you’ve happy then look at making it a bit more permanent.

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#8

Not much knowledge to share, but an all Boss/Waza pedalboard pleases me visually.

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#9

have you seen @delikinesis encyclopedia bosstanica? very visually appealing.

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#10

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Thank you @shigginpit! I have been working with this smaller breakaway, I am a fan of the long single rows as well now. I grabbed the new amp in a box.

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#11

not quite the same overwhelming pizzaz but definitely easier to work with and still looks great! what year is that sweet musicmaster bass?

and dude those bassman combos weigh a ton, I hope you don’t have to frequently move it lol

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#12

The musicmaster, I believe, Is a 79, gotta love those short scales! Last time I gigged with the bassman combo, Rhodes, prophet I basically decided I won’t play live anymore, it broke my body and mind. I’m not strong!

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#13

shit, I’m not that strong now either. I haven’t gigged in a long while but I used to bring a 4x10 guitar cab and a mesa mkIII head along with my guitar in a hardcase and a huge bag of pedals everywhere and luckily the amp was in 2 pieces because they were both way heavy.

Back then it was a little easier but I’m getting old and my back hurts just thinking about it. I was in a band with a dude that had a really similar musicmaster bass that was probably a 76. They have a great sound, I’ve always thought they were underrated for what they are. They used to be really cheap to pick up a decent one but these days they’re pretty costly to get a nice one. Short scales are “in” in the 2020’s.

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#14

As for the power supply, I would suggest CIOKS. I ended up with DC7 - very flexible. Every output can be set to either 9V, 12, 15V or 18V. It is also expandable with 4 or 8 output modules. They recently added high power expander module called Crux for hungry digital stuff like Line6 HX processor…
MulitFX - I would look into Empress ZOIA - especially if you are in modulars, because it can comunicate with CV signals. You maybe already know it, because they make it as a module as well… It is highly programmable in a modular way. Or there is a huge user base sharing their presets. For me it was too complicated and I realized I don’t want to think about programming while playing bass.

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#15

The Strymon Ojai power supply is also good - it solved my noise problems with digital pedals.

The Walrus Slo is a pretty cool reverb for those big soundscapes. Boss Tera Echo is neat. I like having a look around at my local shop to see what is on offer used - got a nice deal on a Polymoon a while back.

Processing guitar with Eurorack can be pretty cool too - any filters and effects maybe modulated with an envelope follower or something. But that’s not quite as fun somehow as seeing those little Boss guys on the floor.

BTW both of us here just put the pedals on the floor or a table rather than having a board built out. I never have more than three hooked up at once. Less confusion and you avoid needing boosts or buffered bypass or whatever. Plus it’s easier to move stuff over to my synths.

#16

Are you performing, or is this all studio use? Are you also using this with a guitar, or is this really all for synths?

If you have modular and its studio use, I’d just build out an fx box with line level ins/outs. It’s more flexible than pedals because they’re designed for on the fly usage, where as pedals are designed for guitarist to be used on single settings, unless you add midi to it, but by the time you get the desired flexibility, you might realize it wasn’t worth it?

Anyway, good luck whatever you do.

I’m actually at the point (again) of selling off my stereo pedals and only keeping what’s left for just guitar. What I can get from a modular effects box, vs just connecting to a computer beats pedals any day. Even the H9/H90 is a digital effects box with some of the algos available as plugins.

#17

Still a work in progress, but I also went for an all boss (except 1) waza board. Wanted something self contained so bought one of their pedal cases too.

I will likely switch out certain pedals for others but the flow is generally:

Tuner-gate-fuzz-distortion-mod-delay

Soon enough I’m gonna have it set so that delays, mods and reverbs are on a send/return so the path is just distortion and eq etc. so will likely break it down into smaller boards.

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Using the inbuilt supply on this board probably wouldn’t suit too many digital pedals. Not enough power plus maybe noise, although I’ve not had any issues here. But it’s a simple solution for beginners like me I think.

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#18

This!

I’ve had two Strymon Zuma go down on me now. I’m sure I’m in the minority here though and just bad luck. But the Coiks are far more flexible for power needs.

I’d recommend budgeting for a Radial Reamp if using guitar pedals with synths and line level.

There goes £500 :grimacing::flushed: and not a pedal in sight

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#19

Yes I was about to suggest a reamp box as well. Doesn`t need to be Radial. I had the (cheaper) Palmer Daccapo and it was good enough. It is out of production now, but they have similarly priced replacement. It is called River Trave…

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#20

You’re kinda working backwards here a bit - the board isn’t like a modular case and isn’t necessary immediately. Grab a multifx, maybe a couple drive pedals, and get to work - you can pick a board later, they’re not necessarily expensive.

The pedal rabbithole is vaaaaaast, and as a partially-recovering pedal addict, I have some experience-based recommendations:

  1. Identify what you need first - what you think you might want doesn’t always end up being useful.
  2. Start cheap and work up - there’s some really great stuff available for €20-40 new (I like Mosky stuff a lot, to the point where I prefer some of theirs to boutique stuff I also own). There’s a number of benefits to this, aside from just cost, as even if you bump them off the board, they’re there for a small rig for travel/jams or to use with synths etc.
  3. Multifx are great for a number of reasons as others have said, not least for helping you choose other fx - you might particularly like a certain delay type, so you now have a goal. Zoom MS70 series are really good and will be useful even if you get better stuff.
  4. Some pedals are set and forget - you do one thing at one setting and that’s fine, others are more versatile but that can be an issue too, which is where MIDI comes in.
  5. Routing is something to consider - are you using them with guitar, synth, etc, will you what to change the order of them, mix in the dry signal, etc. There’s a lot of utility pedals out there for this, don’t overlook them - a Boss LS2 will always find a use, for example. You can get pedals for tap tempo or expression pedal to multiple devices at once and these are a godsend.
  6. A cheap pedal you know well is far more useful than an expensive one you don’t.
  7. Dirt pedals are a rabbithole by themselves - but you’ll always find use for a Rat, be it original, clone, or derivative.
  8. Not all pedals work in every context - some fuzz really need to be very first in the chain, some pedals (analogue delays etc) don’t like anything that isn’t guitar level and/or impedance - research your use case before buying.
  9. Flangers can do a whole lot - Chorus, univibe, jet flange, etc - a decent flanger is a safe bet for first modulation pedal, and the one that needs probably the most understanding and time, but it pays off, trust me!
  10. Start with a quality power supply, or at least early in the process as others say - it’ll save a lot of tears down the road, and use quality cables from the start. A cable tester is cheap, too.
  11. You’ll rarely go wrong with Boss!
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