# Where do you begin when planning a...



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Pedal Board Design?

I know there are three approaches. Mine which is 1) not a darn thing at the moment, 2) buying factory made, or 3) making one yourself.

I am curious about what people did in that third option, and what kinds of ideas or decisions went into making their own, and what kinds of regrets you had in doing so.

It seems every 3 weeks when my son is taking his lessons, that L&M has a pedal under 30 bucks on the used table and I am starting a tiny collection now. So, the notion has been on my mind


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

For others, I suspect that pedal boards are all about what you can stuff in a defined space. For me, pedal boards are all about performance. Which means "How easily can I access the things I would engage/disengage on a regular basis?".

Obviously, the no-brainer is that a wah is NEVER going to find itself at the rear of a pedalboard in the midst of a bunch of other things. Scroll through the lets-see-your-pedalboard thread and you'll find them almost uniformly at the front right corner, where a person can easily access them without error. 

And that sort of thinking is the basic premise I'm working from: pedals need to be placed where you can get to them when you need to, without any disruption to your concentration or playing. It's about fluidity of motion and capacity to turn intent into action.

With that in mind, I draw people's attention to the manner in which a *great* many commercial pedals that use momentary footswitches and solid-state switching can be easily adapted to use remote switching. One could have a whole whack of Boss, DOD, Yamaha, Danelectro, Arion, Daphon, etc., placed where they can fit, but their actuation switch located in a nice neat and compact row of momentaries along the front skirt of the pedalboard, where you can get at them without having to feel like you're walking in a minefield.


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## Guest (Mar 11, 2009)

My approach is similar to Mark's: I want ergonomics over efficient use of space. I build my own boards. Before I embark on a new design I'll mock it up in cardboard. Just slice up a couple of boxes and use tape to piece it together. This gives me a good feel for the ergonomic and also helps me with the cuts when it comes time to rip down a big piece of wood.

I generally go for good spacing between my pedals. Things that get tapped often in the front. The stuff that's not engaged so often, or stays on for a long period of time in the back. All my boards are angled so the back row is easier to reach.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

+1 to Mark and Ian's comments. It's hard to organize or design a pedalboard without a rough idea of which pedals you'll be using, how the switches are oriented, whether the boxes are rectangular, square, vertical or horizontally long, etc.

Since you're still buying more pedals, maybe something modular that can be added to or removed from later on?

The angled back row is a good idea. I tend to keep my modulation back there, because I don't hit them as often, or will leave them on for an entire song. Only the delay gets turned on and off with any frequency. 

Up front I go with overdrive(s) and anything else that will get hit often. I stick my tuner there too because I use it as a master mute as well. I like having my trem pedal up front but that is only because of it's size and switch/knob layout.

At the end of the day, I would suggest you try to plan out how you're going to lay out the board as best you can and then grab a sheet of cardboard or newpaper or whatever is on hand and place the pedals on there in roughly that order to give you a sense of how large it has to be.


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## ezcomes (Jul 28, 2008)

which is similar to what i did...

i took all my pedals and laid them out...how i use them, ease of access, accommodating a little extra space...

so i took that layout...measured around it...allowed for expansion and built my own...i like space and ease...i don't know how some people can use some which are soooo cramped...

my board ended up being 30x16...3/4" plywood with a 1x2 pine strip about 2x3 the way up the back to give it a bit of an angle...and then velcro'd everything tight into place...works great...then bought some brass counter handles and screwed them into place so that i've got handles to carry it around with...and picked up a travel bag thingy from MEC for 15 bucks thats a tight fit and thats how i get it around


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I recently engaged in a lengthy correspondance about a pedal-board related idea with long-time friend RG Keen, the engineer at Visual Sound. I noted that there are frequently threads about whether fuzz goes before wah or after, whether phaser/Uni-vibe goes before fuzz or after, and so on. These are not *just* sonic taste questions, though. Because when you realize what is involved in "recommitting" space on a pedalboard to have a different order, it becomes a question people want answered up front in a sure manner before they begin setting the pedal-board up.

What I suggested to him was that there was a need for an order-flipper pedal, and that since most such order questions revolved around use of fuzz, that a Jeckyll&Hyde-sized pedal that incorporated a fuzz and a customizable loop that you could stick before OR after the fuzz just by hitting a switch would find favourable response. One of the chief convenience/selling factors is that it would let you set up a bunch of pedals on your board, as a loop connected to the "hub" provided by the fuzz, and know that you could monkey around with order and *still let your pedals stay in the same physical location without having to reroute cables*. If one is using solid-state switching, it is a trivial matter to reconfigure the loop selection so that it can alternate between loop on/off and loop before/after .

If it were only the case that people played with a 1969-style wah+fuzz and all that was involved in order-switching was unplugging and replugging a couple cables, that would be one thing. But as keeper's original query so aptly indicates, these days you have to seriously plan out a pedal-board, simply so you can have some assurance you'll be satisfied with it after you've gone through the aggravation of setting it up. Because the aggravation of tearing it down and setting it up differently is a major PITA.

So, in the spirit of unabashed marketing research, would the sort of pedal I described make pedalboard setup easier for you? Keep in mind that if you turn the fuzz off, such a pedal could also function as a loop selector. I know I've piqued RG's curiosity, but I know him well enough now to realize that his quiet on this does not mean that he is silently working on it or that he ISN'T silently working on it.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Hey guys this is great information.

So, strapping and taping and what else? Velcro? Foam? Carpet? There was a post here not too many moons ago of a fellow losing a bottle of beer into an amp... between all the foot work, and floor bunnies, how long do boards tend to last?


Hmm, Mark, a swapper pedal only makes sense. Thinking of how one would look, I am mentally picturing 6 jacks for 2 pedals. In/Out A, In/Out B, guitar in, amp out, and a single switch to change the order. Is that what you have in mind or are you thinking something more or less complex?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Probably less complex, but ultimately its not my choice. As I described it to RG, it was 4 jacks: in/out, loop-send/loop-receive. Current 2-unit pedals at Visual Sound have two hard-to-miss stomp-style actuators. I figure one of them turns the onboard distortion on or off, and the other situates whatever goes in the loop before or after the distortion. This assumes some sort of buffer between the input jack and any other circuitry.

Probably the key production question is the extent to which this would dovetail with what appear to be cast aluminum chassis that are intended to be "generic" for VS pedals. Normally, the 2-unit pedals have 6 holes on top for knobs, and two slots for rocker switches. The ideal would be to adapt the product to the box without requiring any additional machining.

I suppose one could always have a pedal that ONLY does order-flipping. But since VS distortions seem to be fairly well-received, and since most order-flipping revolves around a distortion and something else, I figured it was natural to marry a distortion and order-flipper in one box, especially if its one that lots of people like ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt8PzSQJeBI&feature=related ).


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## Guest (Mar 11, 2009)

I have a design for a 4PDT-based flipper that'll take any effect and let you switch it's position between two places. I had intended to build it to switch my ModFactor from in my amp's loop to in front of my amp.

If you don't need an LED indicator (and you wouldn't if you used a toggle instead of a stomp switch I guess -- but then you have to bend over to flip it) you could get away with a 3PDT (assuming your amp doesn't mind having ground on its input tied to ground on its F/X loop).

It falls in to the "stupidly simple" category of boxes to build.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

iaresee said:


> I have a design for a 4PDT-based flipper ...
> 
> It falls in to the "stupidly simple" category of boxes to build.



How did you do it with 4 poles? In drawing it out, I count 6PDT :/

**Edit
>_> I would also assume that you could not use mechanical relays in a pedal due to vibrarions and signal isolation issues, but is there a double throw solid state relay?


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

mhammer said:


> an order-flipper pedal


How bizarre... I was laying in bed last night thinking about this EXACT concept...

gtrguy


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## Guest (Mar 13, 2009)

keeperofthegood said:


> How did you do it with 4 poles? In drawing it out, I count 6PDT :/
> 
> **Edit
> >_> I would also assume that you could not use mechanical relays in a pedal due to vibrarions and signal isolation issues, but is there a double throw solid state relay?


You can use relays in a pedal. See http://www.geocities.com/thetonegod/switches/switches.html -- those are great designs, used all over the place (I'm pretty sure Lovepedal is using the Wicked Switch now for most of their pedals. Definitely for the Eternity they are).

And here's a schematic for you:



You don't need to switch ground. And that doesn't have an indicator status (so I'd use a throw switch that lets you know where the pedal is placed by which way it's pointing). So you can get away with a 4PDT.

Of course if you got electro-mechanical you can do it all: switch grounds and an indicator status light.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

AH! Isn't that is an A/B box? >_> it doesn't transpose pedals does it? Unless you have a way of wiring externally to do so or I am not following the signal right??

This is what I have come up with (sadly I don't have any funky drafting programs my trials are all expired >.<)










This ONLY shows the signal path and not the ground path (which in a metal box all grounds are tied together anyways). The black wire lines are the jack in/outs, the BLUE line is path one(1) and the red is path two(2), and where the blue/black/red overlap is a single pole double throw switch element (or section of relay) and this is why I had in mind 6 poles of double throws (or one on/off swicth and a relay really).


What happens is in the ONE position (1) the signal enters at the In, goes to Box A in, leaves Box A out, goes to Box B in, then leaves Box B out and exits at Out. In position TWO (2) the signal instead goes to Box B in, out Box B out, into Box A in, out Box A out to the Out. In this way the order for the signal is swapped, In --> A --> B --> Out or In --> B --> A --> Out.

>_> I would use 4 LED's too. Two each on the A and B sides, if the order was A then B then the A side would have 1 LED lit and the B 2 LED's lit, and visa-versa.


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## Guest (Mar 13, 2009)

Oh man! It would help I showed you the correct schematic! I'm so sorry. That was an early revision. Here's the working version:



This doesn't show grounds. It assumes they're all tied together. Credit goes to Ian M. (slacker at http://www.diystompboxes.com/) for helping me sort this out a few months ago.



keeperofthegood said:


> AH! Isn't that is an A/B box? >_> it doesn't transpose pedals does it?


Close, but not quite. An A/B selects between two signals and places it on one output. This is two A/B boxes synchronized with the connection on the unselected line shorted to an output. 

In switch position down you get:


```
AMPIN --> ESND
ERTN --> AMPOUT
LOOPIN --> LOOPOUT
```
This routes the signal from the front of the amp into the effects unit and back out to the rest of the in-front-of-amp chain. The loop in jack is connected to the loop out jack so signal in the loop isn't broken (a key difference between an A/B switching setup).

In switch position up you get:


```
AMPIN --> AMPOUT
LOOPIN --> ESND
ERTN --> LOOPOUT
```
Now the in-front-of-amp jacks are connected together and the effect is routed to the in-loop jacks instead.

This can be down with a 4PDT switch if you don't need an indicator light.



> Unless you have a way of wiring externally to do so or I am not following the signal right??


No external wiring here. I just showed you the wrong darn schematic sorry!

Remember: mine isn't changing the order of pedals. It's moving whatever is placed in the ESND/ERTN loop between two different loops (AMPIN/AMPOUT and LOOPIN/LOOPOUT).


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## Guest (Mar 13, 2009)

keeperofthegood said:


> This is what I have come up with (sadly I don't have any funky drafting programs my trials are all expired >.<)


For that incorrect schematic I first showed I used EAGLE CAD, the free version. Works great at home.

The updated version was done with Visio at the office.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Thank you!


I am going to pull out the soldering iron etc later this weekend 

I need some rubber for a plant stand I just bought, any recommendations on what to use on a pedal board? 

Is it better to use a rubber or a rug?


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## Guest (Mar 14, 2009)

It's best to use Velcro fabric. But it's hard to find in small quantities. If you can't use the fabric I'd leave it bare (no rubber or rug) and use strips of the industrial strength velcro you can buy in rolls at a h/w store.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

O_O I never thought of that! There is a fair sized FabricLand here in Burlington, I am sure they have that or a material patently close to it 

Ok, I got the Eagle program  It is nice. Some name lables could do with being made more user friendly but overall not a bad little program.

SO...

The other day I mentioned an interest in a passive mixer, and I do have a frankensteined one around somewhere, I used I think 3 100K resistors in it. The critter failed for what I had wanted, it DC shorted the application out. I have been re-thinking this one though; had I done it as two capacitors in, and two resistors, would it have worked out better? 










The way I am "seeing this" is that it is essentially two highpass filters in, one a mix of 0.047uf + 100K ohms, the other 0.1uf + 50K ohms and if the math is correct (ug, I used a calculator >.< http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm ) and the knee's should be 33.9Hz for 0.047/100K and 31.8Hz for 0.1/50K or at least relativly close with parts tollerances.

Any thoughts on this?


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## Guest (Mar 16, 2009)

For free Eagle is hard to beat. And it does layout too.

So for your passive mixer: you want to use the capacitors to decouple the two signals? Is that it? Otherwise here's Beavis Audio's passive mixer. That's as simple as you can make it. Click the pic for Beavis' page:



In your drawing, from In A -> Out, you haven't got an HP filter. It'd be an HP filter if R2 went to ground and you tapped In A right after C1.

If you need to decouple the inputs check out Jack Orman's simple mixer:

http://www.muzique.com/schem/projects.htm

Click the link -- it'll take you to his projects page and the mixer is described about 2/3 of the way down that page. There's a nice diagram there. I get the feeling you maybe excised your passive mixer from the input stage on his mixer schematic -- is that true?

And on the topic of effects order switching, here's Beavis Audio's take on the matter: http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/PedalHacker/OrderSwitcher.htm -- you can do so many cool things with 4PDT stomps.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Oooo thank you for reminding me of that site, been a while since I read through it. 

No, this cap input idea came simply from the experience of "I tried to hook two pedals in parallel and they killed each other". I read some time back, _before coming to this forum_, that at one point people were getting different effects by running pedals in parallel and this worked on amps that allowed multiple inputs (I do not recall if the article I read got specific on amps or users, it was only a historical article on guitars in general). My amp has only one input, and I had the want to see what that was like, and using the all resistive approach was a fail unfortunately. It just struck me the fail was likely DC in nature, and I should have used a decoupled means of mixing them....


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## Guest (Mar 16, 2009)

Parallel effect blending is pretty cool. You can get some great sounds with it. For best results though I'd invest a little more into the box though. Here's J.D.'s article on a parallel box on GGG.com: http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=26 -- he mentions the basis for his design will be R.G.'s Simple Mixer that I pointed at in my last post.

Here's a great thread (with clips!) of one man's journey into parallel effect blending. Has a ton of ideas for parallel blenders: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=66172.0

The cap idea will definitely help filter out DC components in your signal, but without some gain recovery after it I think you'll find the output is a little thin.

As for decoupling outputs for driving two amps at once: that's a bit different than what you're doing here. You'll want to use a proper transformer for that.


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