The "Dang I Should Have..." Pedalboard Thread

[LoopyBullet]

Hi everybody,

I'm looking for stories or just tidbits of information from you guys on the topic of...if you could redo your pedalboard journey , what would you have done differently? (More interested in the board rather than the pedals) Meaning, was your first pedalboard too big and you wish you got a smaller one to begin with? Did you get a pedalboard and you realized that the power supply should have been installed in a different place? If you ordered or made a custom board, was there a feature that you should have had added from the beginning? Features to protect the pedals? Certain wiring details, etc? What are things that you had to learn the hard way?

...story is, I'm ordering a pretty dang sweet pedalboard from the great folks at Salvage Custom. If you haven't seen their builds, then you should see their builds. Such a convenient type of layout! Great aesthetic attention to detail too! It's in the early stages of building now, and I think I pretty much covered everything I want, but I'd just like to hear people's experiences with their own pedalboard-finding journey. Basically, I've realized in the past couple years that it's actually cheaper in the long run to get what you REALLY want in the beginning rather than keep buying and selling music gear that's "almost" what you want. Maybe there's a detail that I'm not thinking about that I'd like to communicate before they finish the board. Just looking for stories to influence me, is all.



Thanks!

 

[Invisible Man]

1) Hardshell case. Worth the investment.
2) Leave yourself room for change/flexibility. I think we all arrive at a moment where we say "these are my pedals. I'm gonna build a board around them." You'll inevitable swap them out for something else, and your custom board with be...less than optimal.
3) Bigger than you need, if possible. Also--lighter? Those are contradictory messages. I found a very cheap road case from Rondo Music; bought a big one and a medium one for less than $100 total. They're very light (read: cheap), but they do the trick, and I can configure things the way I like. I have giant feet, so not having a tetris board is a big deal when playing out.
4) Power supply underneath, if possible. Explains itself, I think.

 

[PedalPedalPedals]

Dang, I should have gone for the Mondo instead of the Pro.

 

[Lullabies]

I woulda skipped getting homeade ones and smaller boards and jump right to the flight case bigger board.

 

[NHBluesMan]

wish i'd started with a pedaltrain instead of the SKB board i had... also wish i'd gotten the hard-shell case when i did go pedaltrain

 

[Holzar1988]

I deliberately limited myself to the space on a PT-Jr. Guess what? I want more pedalboard real estate.

The thing is, it only takes one or two really big pedals to eat up a lot of space there. I've managed to cram 11 pedals on at times. But if I want to include something like a Zoom G3 or a Digitech Whammy, well, the PT Jr.'s not quite big enough to accomodate that. Expression pedals or even smaller multieffects units can end up eating alot of square inches on a board. Probably going to upgrade to a PT-2 at some point.