diy pedalboard

Some of this stuff can get pricey and hard to justify when there are still ukes on my wishlist. I've had great luck monitoring Reverb and Craig's list for used, minty pedals. I was able to score the larger pedals and avoid paying retail.

Thanks for the history lesson and for the PG Music link. Looks very interesting...

Brother Michael -

Yet another tangent question, and no disrespect to your wonderful pedalboard, but thought this might be of interest to others so did not send via PM...

With the Trio, can you have it 'learn' your chords, and then stop the playback, and then start it up and have it play like 4 bars in that progression without you actually playing yourself?

My thinking is that it would be nice to train it, and then hit record for a video and have it just already know the song, since it seems like with many loopers, the first 32 bars of any video demos, they show the person having to first build up all the loops and this would be tedious for the audience watching the video or during a live gig...

It would be nice if you could build up a library or playlist in advance and just run down the list without training the chords or building up the loops in front of others, while they patiently wait for the meat of the song to begin (I have nightmare visions of 'The Blues Brothers' movie with needing a screen-wall of chicken wire to fend off the beer bottles and raw eggs being thrown at the stage if your intro segment goes on too long)

So I'm just thinking out loud on this.

It would be handy instead of just pre-recording your backup tracks and then having them play out your PA or amp from your phone, which would not allow any changes during performance, but with the Trio, you could change amongst the parts if you wanted to play the bridge or chorus part again on the fly every so often...

Yes sir Brother B, I believe it can do all of that. I don't have all of the specs in front of me but if I recall correctly it can remember 12 songs on an SD card with 5 parts to each song. So you can shuffle through the intro, verse, chorus etc. If you were inclined to swap out SD cards you would have a lot more songs at your disposal.

Thanks for inspiration for new year. Building by myself a pedalboard is definitely my amazing next project.
Can you provide an image that show how your cables connect together and how to be well-organized with all of these?
Also, what do you means of 'inexpensive'? what's is the best affordable budget range?

I have found cool post that conduct an interview with some high-reputation builders on the market. It's good to hear some direct insights from each builders.
https://shredaddict.com/diy-pedalboard/

There are some key takeaways I would like to take here and discuss:
1. Anyone try Aluminum? That's weird made by Chris from CDW
2. Anything new alternatives to hold the pedals away from using Velcro?
3. Is light-weight actually a good trade-off? Because when playing on live stage, a heavily steady wood will keep your pedal not vibrating and 'moving around'

photoshooter said:

Yes sir Brother B, I believe it can do all of that. I don't have all of the specs in front of me but if I recall correctly it can remember 12 songs on an SD card with 5 parts to each song. So you can shuffle through the intro, verse, chorus etc. If you were inclined to swap out SD cards you would have a lot more songs at your disposal.

Click to expand...

Ok - sounds great. Thanks for the confirmation. eventually I will get a Trio+ and then will likely need to create another pedalboard...thanking you for sharing the inspiration of your design, of course

AlanASmith said:

...2. Anything new alternatives to hold the pedals away from using Velcro?...

Click to expand...

I have used zip-ties (aka tie-wraps) in the past if not using velcro.

The disadvantage to zip-ties is that you cannot remove or re-arrange pedals easily with zip-ties unless you cut them and then put new ones, which is wasteful to me, but may be a more rugged method of holding them on if you are constantly gigging with your pedalboard.

In a belt-and-suspenders approach, my pedals are currently fixed with BOTH velcro and zip-ties, even though I have not gigged with my pedalboard, mainly because I like to punish myself LOL (and also use zip-ties whenever/where-ever possible to fasten things down or hold things together)

Similarly, I've seen commercial pedalboards that have a sort of clamp system, like an L-bracket for each corner or for each side, and they are adjustable and need to be screwed down tight to hold. I avoided this myself because of both this being too fiddly a system for me, as well as adding to the weight and # of parts involved. They were also about 25% more expensive than boards without this system.

Zip-ties are cheap, Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart has them in a round container of ~1000 zip-ties for ~$8-10 USD.

I re use zip ties constantly, just push that little bit that holds against the ratchet part, & gently undo them.

I'm almost finished securing and cabling all the pedals. I'll take some more pics and post them when I'm done. I'll also add a few observations from my experience.
I'm using 3M Dual Lock Fastener to attach the pedals and so far I'm liking it much better than velcro.

photoshooter said:

...I'm using 3M Dual Lock Fastener to attach the pedals and so far I'm liking it much better than velcro.

Click to expand...

That stuff is kinda like a super-tuff velcro. Radio Shack used to sell the same/similar called 'SuperLock'.

Cautions about using too much still apply, more than a few square inched per pedal and they become very difficult to remove/reposition.

Also, lots of folks put at least 2 horizontal strips of velcro along the whole length of the wood slats going side-to-side, parallel to top and bottom edge of each slat (spaced apart to the edges), which allows you to re-arrange any pedal on the board, otherwise if you neatly fit each pedal with specific positions, and only the superlock set for that position, you need to remove the superlock as well later on.

Trust me, you will likely be changing things around later, otherwise, you could just use some Suguru, "Hard As Nails" in the caulking gun or silicone construction adhesive to attach the pedals to the board LOL....um, 'permanently'...

just some thoughts for you, but I am sure you will find the best way for your needs.

AlanASmith said:

Thanks for inspiration for new year. Building by myself a pedalboard is definitely my amazing next project.
Can you provide an image that show how your cables connect together and how to be well-organized with all of these?
Also, what do you means of 'inexpensive'? what's is the best affordable budget range?

I have found cool post that conduct an interview with some high-reputation builders on the market. It's good to hear some direct insights from each builders.
https://shredaddict.com/diy-pedalboard/

There are some key takeaways I would like to take here and discuss:
1. Anyone try Aluminum? That's weird made by Chris from CDW
2. Anything new alternatives to hold the pedals away from using Velcro?
3. Is light-weight actually a good trade-off? Because when playing on live stage, a heavily steady wood will keep your pedal not vibrating and 'moving around'

Click to expand...

Booli said:

I have used zip-ties (aka tie-wraps) in the past if not using velcro.

The disadvantage to zip-ties is that you cannot remove or re-arrange pedals easily with zip-ties unless you cut them and then put new ones, which is wasteful to me, but may be a more rugged method of holding them on if you are constantly gigging with your pedalboard.

In a belt-and-suspenders approach, my pedals are currently fixed with BOTH velcro and zip-ties, even though I have not gigged with my pedalboard, mainly because I like to punish myself LOL (and also use zip-ties whenever/where-ever possible to fasten things down or hold things together)

Similarly, I've seen commercial pedalboards that have a sort of clamp system, like an L-bracket for each corner or for each side, and they are adjustable and need to be screwed down tight to hold. I avoided this myself because of both this being too fiddly a system for me, as well as adding to the weight and # of parts involved. They were also about 25% more expensive than boards without this system.

Zip-ties are cheap, Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart has them in a round container of ~1000 zip-ties for ~$8-10 USD.

Click to expand...

Phewww. After going around the town, I still stay with buying Velcro for this first time building because it seems to be the most simplest and cheap solution.

I finally had a chance to finish this project. Somewhere along the way I seem to have picked up another pedal :roll eyes:

For anyone interested the pedals are:
Behring Reverb, Donner Yellow Fall Delay, Donner Tutti Love Chorus, Micro Pog, Donner Blues Drive,
Trio+, Donner Compressor, Donner Tuner, LR Baggs Para Acoustic
A Donner Power Supply is mounted on the underside of the pedalboard.

I used 3M Dual Lock to fasten the pedals to the board and am very pleased with it.

Love it you might get some commissions on the strength of your photos , i'd be interested in your findings on using a compressor with your uke photoshooter i've dipped my toe on one of these.

Thanks frigiliana. This is all largely experimental for me. I'm still fumbling my way through it all, especially tweaking the settings on the compressor. But so far the results are positive. I'd be happy to report back as I gain a little more experience with this stuff.