Guitar Pedal Board

As a casual amateur guitarist, I wanted a low cost pedal board to create effects for rock and blues rock. This DIY board was built with a range of (mostly) affordable pedals, some purchased new, some second-hand.

The Board

The board itself was constructed from scrap pieces of timber. The sides are two wedge shaped pieces, angled so that the board tilts up from the floor at about twenty degrees. Four slats are screwed to the side pieces, spaced with enough room for cables to be passed in between. After a quick sanding it was sprayed with a few coats of matt black paint.

Heavy Duty Velcro was used to attached the pedals to the board. I had purchased 50mm but this was too wide, so I cut it down the middle into two 25mm strips, sticking the felt side to the wooden slats. Small strips of the hook side were used for the pedals. To improve adhesion, I heated up the glue with a hair-dryer before sticking them on to the base of each pedal.

The Pedals

The pedals are listing here in the order they are connected in the signal chain, starting at the bottom right of the board:

• Valeton Coral Chromatic Tuner
  A chromatic tuner which a large, easy to read, display.
• KOKKO Mini Compressor
  A basic analog compression pedal, to thicken up the tone.
• TC Electronic Sub'N'Up Octaver
  This polyphonic octaver pedal, allows you to mix the dry signal with one octave up, one octave down and two octaves down. The TonePrint app can also be used to tweak a multitude of settings on the pedal. I mostly use the dry with some one octave down to emulate a bass guitar playing in the background.
• EHX Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker
  Because everyone needs some fuzz!
• Tom's Line Bluesy Vintage Blues Overdrive
  An overdrive pedal inspired by the Marshall Blues Breaker pedal.
• Asmuse American Amp Simulation
  This pedal simulates the sound of Fender amplifiers, the Voice knob shapes the overall tone; blackface to the left, tweed to the right. This is great for recording direct into an audio interface connected to a computer.
• Donner VERB Square Evolution+
  This pedal has seven modulation reverb effects; Room, Hall, Church, Spring, Plate, Mod & Darksea. I mostly us a low level of Plate add some space to the tone.

Power & Patching

• Caline Guitar Pedal Power Supply
  This unit has 10 x isolated DC Outputs, 9V/12V/18V, only the 9V outputs are currently used.
• Donner 15cm Flat Patch Cables
  These flat cables allow the pedals to be placed close together, taking up less space on the board.

Overall, a reasonably versatile pedal board which meets my needs, for now! In total, it cost less than what you could pay for one boutique pedal.

There is still some room on the board, so I'm sure I'll squeeze something else in there at some point in the future.