Building my own pedal board

I've had a ModTone PB8 Pedalboard for a while, and there are a number of things I don't like about it. Mainly messy cables, poor velcro and no slant to it.

I would love a PedalTrain, but the cost is a bit above me.

So the plan is to build my own from IKEA shelving.

There are a few pages on the net that show the GORM shelving. This isn't available in Australia, but the similar HEJNE ones are.

So I bought some today

https://i.imgur.com/JLgR247l.jpg

They come in a pack of two, so the plan will be to cut one slat off, and rotate this 90degrees to make the slope and fix with some brackets. Add some feet and handles. Utilise a slat off the other shelf as reinforcement.

I will plan to paint it black and add some Velcro strips.

Eventually I will mount a power supply underneath.

Should be fun!

Neat idea! I've been contemplating making a couple that are angled at the sides so that you can put two or three together in a kind of semi-circle (if that makes sense?). Haven't put much more thought into it than that, but between you and DocNomis I'm feeling a bit of inspiration coming on...

Cut the shelves to desired size tonight, and did an initial sand. Didn't take any pics, and due to the biting insects I packed up early!

Had some good tunes pumping with some SRV/Albert King.

The next step will be to attach the pieces together, file the corners so it sits flat, and then paint it. I have chosen a flat black from a Rustoleum rattle can.

So I've done a little bit on the board

https://i.imgur.com/21XHjgKl.jpg

Cut the pieces

https://i.imgur.com/vkme8Z6l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ev3vHWRl.jpg

Mocked things up

Next step will to be to paint all the pieces and then put it together. I was going to attach it all prior to painting, but the brackets I have are galvanized, so I imagine the paint will just peel off if I do it that way.

I'm a bit worried that the bracing for the upright looks a bit insubstantial and would suggest fitting wedge ends if possible. What you've got will obviously support the pedals, but you' ll be stomping on it and invariably if you gig it, some heavy oaf will step on it, the back goes, and your power supply could get squashed and damaged.

Probably one time when I'd over-engineer the design just to be on the safe side.

Things happen slowly around here thanks to the newborn and work.

Today I painted the wood.

Rustoleum flat black rattle can. Very happy with the finish so far. Will probably go one further coat. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...8042041339.jpg

OHS supervisor was happy

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e54d9a6bce.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by churchie

Things happen slowly around here thanks to the newborn and work.

Today I painted the wood.

Rustoleum flat black rattle can. Very happy with the finish so far. Will probably go one further coat. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...8042041339.jpg

OHS supervisor was happy

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e54d9a6bce.jpg

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Good work that man! You can never be too safe.

The OHS officer in me heartily approves

Put thing together today and am almost done. There is a little bit of paint to touch up and then apply the hook&loop tape so I can affix my pedals.

https://i.imgur.com/5DYER1Jl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/fdRfh9Jl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4DwZX6Bl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/sIRNTIPl.jpg

LOoks good man

Looks cool.

I loved my Hejne board... I moved on to a Gator board with a soft case, but I'm not feeling it...

I have been tempted to make a new one using the larger 77cmx47cm shelves (my first was the 77cmx28cm one).

I wonder how the weight is vs the Pedaltrain type aluminium boards of similar size?

mocked up with pedals

https://i.imgur.com/XiIeJWgl.jpg

next step will be isolated power supply and new patch cables

that's were the money comes in, power supply and cables. :(

Yep. So may be a while before I get to that.

For anyone interested, the BD-2, DS-1 and TS-9 are all Robert Keeley modded pedals

Looks good man

I got a couple of Vitoos PS1 units via Ebay from a seller in China. For my home setup they seem to work okay. They may not be as noise free as the more expensive units but for the price I'm not complaining. If you are serious about recording or gigging with a cranked amp then these may not suit everyone’s needs (due to "hiss" noise), but for a quite good home practice rig they are great...

In my practice/home rig into my JVM (or any effects loop gifted amp) I typicaly use two units, one unit on the input jack pedals (Wah, tuner, Big Muff, TS9, etc..), and a second unit on the effects loop (phaser, chorus, flanger, delay, etc..).... As I'm not much for metal OD tones so I tend to stay away from uber high gain, if I select the JVM OD high gain channel I get what I consider to be considerable "hiss" which is to be expected and most probably is just my JVM being a JVM, but on the clean channel with all the effects hooked up it's hiss-less and which is quite fine for me. I've tried using one PS1 on both the input and the loop effects at the same time and had nil issues... for the price they are definitely worth a try...

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/VITOOS-P...put-8-Way-U3P8

I'm using a couple of the "caline power" cheapies and do the same, the gain/EQ and compressor on one and the chorus,reverbs and delays that go to the effects loop on another. I don't get much noise, but then I don't play at high volumes to really notice it.

I've got a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, mine's all stock except the indicator led, swapped it out for a blue one.


I used to use an MXR Power Brick to power my pedals but found that I would get hum noise coming through the amp, I tried switching back to 9V batteries and the hum went away.

It's the digital pedals that really need to be supplied from a power supply with isolated outputs as they do tend to suffer from adding digital noise from even small ground loops, which isolated outputs avoid.

I've got a couple of Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 units on my board and even with them, and their all-isolated outputs, I still got very audible digital nose when using a couple of the Andertons Tone City pedals (chorus and phaser) together on the same PSU. Feeding them from different PSUs cured that (they are both gone from by board now).

Your board is only as good as its weakest link. So use decent patch leads and spend a bit on your PSU(s). I say you should spend as much on each one as you are prepared to spend on a pedal. No point spending $200 on a pedal (times the number of pedals on the board) and then $40 on a PSU for them that adds extra noise to the sound.

The problem is knowing what are good and bad pedal PSUs. I've never seen a true shoot-out in a magazine and have yet to look on-line (but doubt I'll find any tests conducted with any decent analytical equipment).

The guys on 'That Pedal Show' put out a half decent YouTube video a year ago about powering pedals... They had an acronym of VCPI being Voltage Current Polarity Isolation...

Voltage and Current are pretty self explanatory, as is Polarity, but I was a little disappointed in their explanation of the whole Isolation thing. Earth loops and appliance noise isolation are two completely separate issues yet both can give the same audible effects, and the guys video seemed to overlap the discussion of the two issues particularly as both are minimised by 'isolation' for very different reasons.

Using one power board to do both input effects and effects loop devices opens the door to creating an earth loop that runs from the input jack to the effect then on through the power board to the effect in the effects loop and then back to the amp via the effects loop cable. A huge circle of earth wires so to speak. Very bad for noise and hum.... If noise and hum are an issue then the simple solution is to separate the power of the input and the effects loop effects thus breaking the 'huge circle' with Earth on the the amp as a common 'star point' for all Earth's.

Then there is noise induced from one effect to another... Digital noise is present on the power rail of virtually every digital effect pedal, and this noise often gets into adjacent analogue pedals via the power lead. Usually it comes in via the actual voltage rail but it can also jump into pedals via the power cable earth. The solution is to isolate each pedal to its own 9V or 12V or 18V regulator such as found in many 'isolated power boards' although the design of the power board in some cases leaves much to be desired. Usual affair is to use a bunch of 7809 100mA regulators and maybe a LM317 for the 500mA socket which will work well only if there are the appropriate electrolytic caps surrounding the regulator IC's. While most are pretty good there are some power boards that have these caps missing or the wrong value while others over compensate with 'extras' for near nil tangible benefit.

Yes, it is better to put your digital pedals on separate power supplies to your analogue pedals, and it's better to have separate power supplies for your input effects and your effects loop effects.... but if you can get away with and have nil nose/hum using only one isolated power supply board for all your essential and much needed effects then lucky you... Luckier still if you suffer nil hum/earth loop issues all you are using is a simple pedal to pedal jump cable.... Way back when in days long gone where a Fuzz and a wah and a boost/OD was all that existed a simple jump cable was all that was needed...

For reference, my digital effects are from TC electronic, Digitech, NUX and CatalinBread, and analogues are from Ibanez, ElectroHarmonics, Dunlop, Behringer, Joyo and my workshop bench...

Back to the pedalboard.

I picked up a Mooer power supply - seems to get reasonable reviews for the price.

I have some locally made patch cables on the way.

I have also used cable ties to attach a power board to the pedalboard.

Fun!

Attachment 29624

Looks awesome! Good to see I'm not the only one who buys pedal boards from Ikea, though I went with the prebuilt option: Link

You could go pedal crazy with one of these then! https://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/60204928/

Your board looks great.

I just posted my much more humble pedalboard build (just slapped some pine together with velcro on top). I naively bought a daisy chain power supply instead of something with isolated outputs, and the noise was driving me crazy. Finally today I isolated it to the digitech trio. It came with it's own power brick so running it separately with everything else on the daisy chain cut the noise to nothing. The Xtomp mini is also digital but it's completely silent.