Help me build a pedal board

sleepside · 2024-04-22T22:17:16.498Z

reeloy:

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

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

Bartizanier · 2024-04-22T22:24:00.965Z

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.

Stone262 · 2024-04-22T22:28:45.061Z

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.

Suspect_Frequency · 2024-04-23T00:19:42.291Z

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

IMG_3005800×600 108 KB

shigginpit · 2024-04-23T01:20:00.406Z

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

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Your Setups (Part 1) Other Gear

[IMG_1373] [IMG_1375] Built new pedalboard, added sub, sold smaller synths. Feeling clear headed.

delikinesis · 2024-04-23T01:28:04.787Z

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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.

shigginpit · 2024-04-23T01:29:30.989Z

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

delikinesis · 2024-04-23T01:35:40.617Z

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!

shigginpit · 2024-04-23T01:51:39.039Z

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.

QBass · 2024-04-23T04:24:29.402Z

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.

tapesky · 2024-04-23T04:39:48.605Z

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.

elxsound · 2024-04-23T04:50:25.380Z

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.

kuroichi · 2024-04-23T05:43:08.031Z

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.

image3840×2160 3 MB

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.

brucegill · 2024-04-23T12:29:37.147Z

QBass:

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

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 and not a pedal in sight

QBass · 2024-04-23T16:12:01.227Z

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…

Mister_Wood · 2024-04-23T16:28:44.503Z

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:

Identify what you need first - what you think you might want doesn’t always end up being useful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A cheap pedal you know well is far more useful than an expensive one you don’t.
Dirt pedals are a rabbithole by themselves - but you’ll always find use for a Rat, be it original, clone, or derivative.
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.
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!
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.
You’ll rarely go wrong with Boss!

dizzy · 2024-04-23T21:40:58.519Z

Yeah stymon make a good power supply. They are extensible too which is handy. Their pedals are real good.

Get a bigsky or bluesky for reverb imo, i think analog delays are real nice, and analog chorus is great on synths. Strymon el cap isnt analog but its a great delay.

I wouldnt bother with a compressor if ur using synths, they help with guitar for longer sustain but synths u can control it thru the patch. Not that they are useless but should be something for when u have some cooler pedals.

Budget for some utility to control gain, synths can be a lot louder than pedals can handle, particularly the more boutique ones. Radial EXTC is real nice but pretty bulky and expensive and has specific requirements around power so make sure ur power supply can handle it if ur thinking about it. I just plug it in seperately but gain is more of an issue when using eurorack.

Also embrace mono, most pedals are gonna be mono, you miss out on a lot limiting urself to stereo only, and some pedal makers have weird ideas on how to do stereo which can lead to phase issues.

Having a nice reverb right at the end lets u run a mono signal thru the board and then open it up into a nice stereo field at the end, which is also where some chorus can sound great.

janglesoul · 2024-04-23T21:54:21.480Z

Mister_Wood:

I have some experience-based recommendations

Sound advice from Mr Wood. Don’t make it a big thing. Just grab a few boxes and dial in something glorious. Cheap can be as inspiring as boutique.

I like Cioks too. (Dc-10)

Matthewsavant · 2024-04-23T23:45:05.716Z

Excellent suggestions and advice, very much appreciated.

I will be using it (mostly) for synths but still want to reserve the ability to run whatever else into it (mics/guitar/drum machines etc)
And it will be for studio use not live use.

Cost is definitely a factor at the moment, I was initially going to build a modular FX box instead (I haven’t ruled it out) because there are some incredible effects in eurorack but I speced out a 6U 104hp all effects modular of modular effects that have been on my wish list for years and it was just around the $5000 mark which is way out of the question for the foreseeable future.

If I go down the pedal rabbit hole I am definitely seeing a lot of boutique stuff that I like but I like the idea of throwing a bunch of cheap pedals together to get things started

janglesoul · 2024-04-24T09:16:39.363Z

Oh, and one more thought. Pedalboards are great for live use and maybe to have everything ordered in the studio and to avoid clutter. On the other hand being able to pick a few loose boxes, put them in unusual orders, or create odd combinations like putting two phasers in series etc – allows for a lot interesting sound design, happy accidents etc – which you might not get if you have everything in the traditional logical order: dynamic pedals, modulation pedals, timebases effects etc.