DIY Custom FX Pedal Board

[DrNomis_44]

Hi everyone,


Thought I would get the ball rolling and start a thread about a custom fx pedal board I'm going to be making this fortnight, okay, so what is a pedal board and why do we need one?, a pedal board is simply a board of convenient size that you put all the pedals you use on in a logical arrangement so that it forms a single neat package, I believe every guitarist needs some kind of pedal board because it will make setting up onstage that much quicker and efficient.


The pedal board I'm going to be making is based on a design I saw in one of my magazines, I had to modify the design a bit so I could use the materials I had to work with, a mate gave me a piece of 13mm plywood that was 800mm by 450mm in size, and I bought some 13mm square timber, and some 90mm by 12mm timber from my local big green shed together with a couple of charcoal coloured carpet tiles, I'll explain what the carpet tiles are for shortly.

The 13mm square timber is to raise the 800mm by 450mm board off the floor a bit to allow some clearance in case I need to run some signal leads underneath the board, the Carpet Tiles are so that I can stick the pedals in place with Velcro strips, the good thing about Velcro is that you can easily re-position the pedals anywhere you like on the board, some guitarists like to permanently attach the pedals to the board.


I'll see if I can upload a scanned hand-drawing of my pedal board so that you can make one too, if you like, stay tuned.

[keloooe]

Sounds like a plan Doc!

[DrNomis_44]

Sounds like a plan Doc!

Yep....until it all goes pear-shaped...haha.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


Here we go, as promised, I managed to scan the hand-drawn design of the Pedal Board I came up with, I've created a PDF version of it so you can download and print it out if you would like to build one for yourself, enjoy!!:


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...d%20Design.pdf


Note: This is something I created for the Build Your Own Guitar forum as a way of giving-back for all the help you guys have been giving me with my guitar builds, so, feel free to modify the basic design to suit your own needs as you see fit, also, feel free to download a copy onto your computer and print it out.


Note 2: Since this is my own design, there should be no copyright issues whatsoever, and I am fully authorizing it's use by all the members of this forum including the PBG staff members.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


I'm just about to start doing some more work on my Custom FX Pedalboard, and will post some progress pics so you can see how I built it, stay tuned for more updates.


Okay, here's a few pics I took of the build-process of my Pedalboard:


First thing I did was to mark-out, cut, and drill two long pieces of square timber to go on the long sides of the rectangular half-inch piece of board I was using to make my Pedalboard:



Next thing to do was to put some PVA wood glue on the square piece of timber after drilling some mounting-screw holes:



I used some wood screws to attach the long pieces of square timber to the board, I also attached a 12mm thick piece of wood to the front of the board, this will hold the power board.

Next thing to do was to mark-out, cut, and drill some shorter pieces of square timber which were glued and screwed into place on the shorter sides of the board:



The board now looked like this:

[DrNomis_44]

Next thing to do was to mark-out, cut, and drill a third short piece of timber, and glue and screw it to the middle of the board:




I then attached four rubber feet to the board, that I had left over from putting casters on my Marshall amp:




Don't you just love it when a plan you've put in place actually turns out well?, the next two things I need to do before I can call the new Pedalboard finished, is to spray-paint it with some Matt Black paint, and glue the two carpet tiles to the top of the board after they've been trimmed to fit, will post a pic of the finished Pedalboard soon.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:

New Custom Pedalboard is now out on my balcony while the Matt Black paint dries, it should be dry enough to glue the carpet tiles in place in about an hour or so.

[keloooe]

Crap Doc that will hold quite a many pedals!

[Dedman]

Thats a pedal SUBURB!

[DrNomis_44]

Crap Doc that will hold quite a many pedals!

I managed to fit about 8 or 9 pedals on the board when I was trying it for size, including the power supply for them too.