One downside for me is that it doubles the number of cables you need. And it gives you two times the opportunity for loose connections. I have an all stereo setup and about 25% of the time I wire what I want up, I end up having to find just one loose connection somewhere because my channels are off by 6 db. I have decent cables (mostly Hosa) and constantly clean them and the patchbay (also a reasonable unit, that blue Samson) with deoxit and still have this issue pretty reliably if I’m using more than 2 pedals at a time. Series or parallel, it’s just sheer number of connections.
+1 on this. My pedalboard is a leftover wood shelf from a cabinet. I just kind of went through my house looking for small pieces of wood that were the right depth. Then I cut it down to the right length and used the scrap pieces to make angled feet. The whole project took 3, maybe 4 cuts. Screws sort of seemed like overkill since it was going on a table so I just glued it. I used textured paint to keep the pedals in place with friction (the angle isn’t that steep).
Totally agree. I have mixed feelings about patchbays. I use my patchbay all of the time because it’s bringing all of the connections from the back of rack mounted gear like my interface, mic pres, compressors, to the front of the rack. But what if all of that gear just had the ins and outs on the front panel? Then the patchbay and the double cabling would be unnecessary. Makes sense for a big studio with walls of racked gear and a patchbay right at the console, but doesn’t make a lot of sense for a pedalboard imo when it’s so easy to just move things around and repatch whenever you want.
I keep bugging my friend to send me the dimensions of his pedals so that I could make a custom walnut pedalboard for him. He still hasn’t sent me anything.
I was in a similar position as you and had racked up a bunch of CB pedals to the degree that the cable mess was getting annoying. So I got a Nano+ and a cioks sol.
Another issue I was having was that I was getting a lot of hum due to all the different ways I was powering the pedals and the Cioks solved all that and kept it tidy. The only thing I find annoying the lack of power switch, I hate removing power cables everything I want to turn off the device.
I even have space over for powering my little modular, which I will use to convert CV to expression and send to the pedals. I just have to get the correct cables and module for that.
I went for the shorter audio cables between the pedals but stuck with individual power adapters. I slimmed down my setup considerably and removed all of the cables that aren’t needed (before it was like „maybe not have everything on the desk but leave the cables plugged so whenever you use it you’re ready to go“). That means the power adapters and cables aren’t bothering me too much as it is right now.
I also stuck with the board I built out of cardboard. The angled part has already collapsed but I don’t really mind, it’s fine for now.
That’s a very cool product and I would have jumped on that a few months ago! But right now I‘m more in the „less is more“ and „commit to an audio path“ camp, so this mini bay looks like a lot of unnecessary headache and cable mess for me personally in this moment in time. But I‘m sure it will be helpful for others, didn’t know such a thing existed!
Nice!
Do you have any hum issue´s or have you managed to get decent power to each pedal?
Lost and Found is a great end of chain pedal, seeing as it has a glue compressor. personally though the pedals i struggle most with is lost and found and onward. Onward is a 50/50 hit or shit for me and with Lost and Found i feel like i hit the sealing in regards to how deep i can go with it.
I’m suspecting though that the magic comes from meshing the two sides together which is something i need to explore further.
No hum issues. They were there for a brief moment after introducing L+F, but just vanished (like some stereo issues I had). I’m using juicy power adapters from Thomann, nothing special. Maybe it depends on what else is on your desk to be picked up as interference? But cool the Cioks solved that for you!
I don’t struggle with Onward, but L+F is definitely my least favorite one. I inteded to use it as end of chain delay or reverb, but find the reliance on alt controls very frustrating (pressing both switches is what collapsed my trashy angle). I have since started to more or less randomly switching through FX from time to time and see what can make the already heavily processed signal more interesting. That makes me a bit more fond of L+F because I can just use it as a kitchen sink pedal that can give me one more flavor of CBA madness on top. Not sure it’s enough to let it stay though.
