I know there are periods when I don't come around much and that's work related and can't be helped but the one thing I have noticed when I am around is that I haven't seen any pedal board threads here. Other forums I've seen have them. I have a LOT of pedals and the old crude and rudimentary plywood board I made a billion years ago fell finally apart on me to the point of no repair about six months ago or so and I've been wondering about what route to take building another. Better, stronger, bigger, faster. I've thought about building another using wood, maybe a hardwood this time like maple but I am also considering aluminium check plate or maybe some light-wall HSS tubing. I'm quite handy with wood but I'm also a qualified welder with a couple of machines right here at home, even if I haven't struck an arc in ages, so either medium is equally accessible to me.

I am asking for some feedback to help me think about what I want to achieve with my next board. Please feel free to post pics of your pedal boards and talk about your ideas for improving on what you've already got or your wish list(s) for what may not yet exist.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I did a self build a while back. Come to think of it, it was over a year ago. And I posted a thread on it.

Well as a short recap, here's a brief picture board of how it went.


One summer evening a long time ago.....

Sorted out what I thought was all I needed/wanted for my board and the order they were to go in



Roughed em out on a bit of flimsy hardboard



Cut to size and access holes drilled



Now the base

This aint good, needs sorting out



Better



Then a bit of this



Then





Now this is where you need a bit of faith. I lost/deleted the remaining photos.
So sprayed the tray, sprayed the top. Fitted hinges to the top. Fitted a power line into the tray. Fitted the top to the tray via the hinges. Cabled and populated the board.



I found that my idea of hiding all the cable in the tray didn't work out as I can't stick to one line up of pedals. Though the tray made great storage space for leads.

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No no and no

Nice board Niki.

I took a simpler approach. Went to Lowes and picked up a piece of 12"x24" wood, black spray paint, velcro strip, and two drawer handles from the kitchen department.

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Tune Low, Play Hard & Floor it!

I didn't even attempt a self build on my board. It keeps changing anyway.

My current foot buddy is a small commercially bought coffin shaped pedal box made by the Coffin case company (what can I say? it was cheap..). I've tried just to include the bare essentials, so the removeable velcro compatible board section is populated by a Boss TU2 tuner, a Vox Cooltron "Snake Charmer" valve compressor, a Fulltone OCD overdrive, an Electro Harmonix Clone(?) chorus and a Boss footlatch to control the Fat Switch function on my Fender Blues Junior amp. 4 Boss power supply wall warts live behind the pedals.

I haven't even secured the pedals to the board. The're all pretty much locked together with Planet Waves serial connectors and 2 very short length PW patch cables. It's all then held in place and protected by the deep case top when in transit. Sometimes I swap the OCD for a Fulldrive 2 or a Boss/Fender Bassman overdrive, and sometimes I'll add a Boss/Fender reverb pedal, so i'm reluctant to commit it all to velcro. It's all pretty secure.

If I put every FX pedal I own on a pedal board, then it would be so long that it would cross an international time zone..

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

i think a wooden board is the way to go, i have a rockcase board roughly 1000x600mm, quite a big board, the interior is coverd in velcro and the outside has ali plating, when its full of pedals it weighs as much as my blues deluxe, building it out of metal would be even heavier, unless u have a slave... i think wood is the easier option

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blues - its a religion...

I don't use that thing any more for much the same reason as Adey states. I'm forever changing what's on it. I use a little Diaggo thing these days.

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No no and no

It's easily concievable to me that a pedal board could be as heavy or heavier than an amp.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I have a lot of vintage pedals with no provision for an adapter and must be unplugged after use to prevent battery drainage.I don't want to destroy the value of these pedals by drillng holes in them to accept a power cable so I'm resigned to having them loose on the floor.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

i built my own using Mr. Nik's pics as an idea for mine. it is not nearly as nice but it has served me well. i know i could build a better one but work has kept me busy and i am grateful.
there are times when i really just want to plug straight in and use the channel selector from the amp. but, i rely heavily on the tuner, chorus and delay.

Although they are a little pricey, I really like the PedalTrain setups. The racks are very solid, and also very lightweight (made of aluminum I believe).
Once I get to the point of having enough pedals to warrant a pedal board, I'll probably end up with a pedal train board.

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Check out my new FB music page!

https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilandMe.Music

this is my current pedal board. at one time I had around 11 or so pedals but now I find less is more. so all I ever have is the amp foot switches, tuner and an overdrive housed in a nice 60's traveling salesman display case the amp i use has a built in gain boost, volume boost, reverb, clean channel and a crunch channel. so everything stays simple at maa feeets
and I always run them on batteries because it eliminates the line noise you get from a power supply.

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My pedal board:

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Tony Houston

Tim I used to think like that. I still don't own a PedalTrain and likely never will.
Have a look at these. Battery powered boards that really cut down the onstage cable dilemma.
http://dcpedalboard.com/

Very expensive. But they look nifty.

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No no and no

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Here's my pedal board. I whipped it up one evening while watching Dancing With The Stars. Considering it's aluminum, it's pretty darn heavy.

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'10 American Deluxe HSS Sunset Metallic
'10 JA-90 Thinline Telecaster
'15 Music Man JP-15 Blueberry Burst
'07 Les Paul Standard Faded LCPG #82
'14 Carvin ST300
'12 Carvin CS424S
'66 Guild Starfire IV w/Bigsby
'14 Warmouth Partscaster Daphne Blue