How To Build A Pedalboard: A Beginners Guide

hey I'm Rachel welcome back to another video so I need a new pedal board well I don't need a new pedal board I want a new pedal well no I need it I need it it doesn't matter I'm building a new pedal board well I'm actually not building a new pedal board I'm kind of just bringing an old pedal board out of retirement now building a pedal board can be an intimidating and overwhelming process especially if you've never put one together before trying to figure out the size what type of board what kind of power supply you need what patch cables you need how many patch cables do I need a MIDI switcher do I need a loop switcher it can get out of hand really fast so I'm gonna document the entire build process of this pedal board teaching you everything you need to know about how to build a great board of your own whether this is your first board build from scratch or you've built boards in the past and you want to build something that's more robust and reliable than anything you've had before we're gonna cover all the fundamentals from how to pick the right size and style of board the right power supply soldered versus solderless patch cables we're gonna talk about how to order your pedals on the board and whether or not you need a MIDI switcher or loop switcher and a whole bunch of other information on how to build great pedal boards so if you haven't done so already be sure to subscribe to stay up to date on this series and future videos coming up so with all that out of the way let's get started so the first step in a great pedal board build is having a plan any time I built a board in the past that didn't come out the way I wanted was because I either skip this step or rushed through it this is really really important and it's probably one of the most important steps in the entire process so the first thing you need to do is sit down and think about or write out your needs what does this pedal board need to accomplish for you this is gonna be completely different for everybody are you a gigging guitarist that needs to be able to cover three or four different styles or genres in one night are you a producer or studio guitarist who needs to cover a really wide variety of different tones or are you someone that sits in their room and likes to experiment with different sounds and pedal orders and all that kind of stuff either way you're going to need a pedal board that fits your specific needs this board for me is going to be my you tube test meal board it's gonna live here in the studio space and it's gonna be a place for different pedals to be swapped in and out all the time to be used on videos to teach tone concepts or to demo new pieces of gear as they come in so I needed to do a few things first I want it to be easy to swap pedals in and out second it needs to have a wide variety of reliable power to support different pedals with different power needs it needs to be big enough to support a bunch of different pedals but not so big that takes up too much space here in my studio and because it's gonna be used here on the channel it needs to be pretty I want to have all of the cabling dressed and organized nicely I want to have custom length signal cabling made up so by the time this is all said and done this should be a pretty robust reliable pedal board now once you've got a plan put together it's time to start thinking about a style and size of pedal board to actually go out and get so there's two main styles of pedal board when you really boil it down the most common one is the angled board now these are really good options for a few reasons first and foremost you can mount your power supply and all of the power cabling underneath the board this will do a few things for you first it'll keep everything under here nice and clean easy to organize it keeps your power cabling away from your signal cabling which is important but we'll get that later and it leaves the top surface of the board free for pedals you don't have to mount the power supply on top of the board the other advantage of an angled board is when you're running multiple rows of pedals the back rows will sit higher than the front rows which makes it easier to step on those back pedals without messing up or stepping on the knobs of your front pedals and the other common style is the flat board now these are good because they're low-profile especially if you're only running a single row of petals like this one you've got a nice slim compact board you don't need a big case for it and with certain flat boards like this pedal train you can actually mount your power supply and all your power cabling underneath it like an angled board so it's kind of the best of both worlds in this case the other thing is if you're on a budget a flat word can be a lot less expensive than angle boards off the shelf or if you're a more DIY minded person you can actually use something like a cutting board or a piece of plywood as a flat board to make your own pedal board from scratch now once you've decided on a style of board it's important to think about the size now this is another one of the most important considerations when designing your pedal board and this is one that I've screwed up a lot in builds in the past now you might be thinking dude I need a huge board okay I run stereo at every gig I've got three reverbs four delays 15 tube screamers that's fine I'm not here to judge I'm just here to tell you you probably need to pair your rig down to as small and light and simple a setup as possible especially if you're gigging and traveling now if you're new to pedal boards and this is your first build but you're only starting out with two or three pedals and you know you want to expand in the future you want to get a board that has some room to grow and this is where the thought and planning comes in what do you want to add how big are those pedals what power needs do they have this will help you decide what size board to get just remember you probably don't need a massive pedal board if you have a huge board a couple of things are gonna happen you're gonna see all this extra space that's not used and you're gonna think that you need to fill it and then before you know it you've got a massive pedal board with a ton of pedals that's really complicated and really heavy and doesn't sound that good because you've got huge cable runs and it can just be a mess so take your time to think about what you absolutely need and what you want to have and try and pare that down to the bare bones now bare bones for you could mean a pedal trained Pro and that's totally fine for me I think it's gonna be this PT 1 I've used this board for probably three or four different builds in the past actually how big is this thing it's 22 by 12 and a half inches I do have a novo 24 in storage which is bigger than this so if I do need to move to that I can but I think for this build the PT one's going to be perfect next up is picking the right power supply now this is an incredibly important step to the entire pedalboard building process because if you get the wrong type of power supply you're either gonna limit your options as to what types of pedals you can use how many pedals you can use or in some cases if you use the wrong type of power or too much power you can even damage certain pedals now when you pair that with the fact that there's so many different options out there from different companies of different styles and output options this can be one of the most confusing and complicated steps of the whole process but don't be scared I'm gonna show you what you need to know to pick the right power supply for your application now if you're just starting out and you're on a budget something like this might be tempting this is a one spot power supply and this is what's known as a wall wart power supply it's the typical thing where you plug this in into the wall you plug this in into a pedal and you're good to go but these are not good options for powering pedal boards for a few reasons first and foremost these don't provide any type of noise filtering or isolated circuitry in fact the way these work is by daisy chaining multiple pedals together off of the same unit now what that can do is introduce a lot of noise and RF interference into your signal chain and in some cases if you are in a room or building that has bad power you can have ground hum and noise that's so bad and so loud you can't even use your rig so when you're building a solid and reliable pedal board you need a great power supply so I recommend something like this this is an isolated DC power supply meaning each one of these outlets powers an individual pedal and they're all isolated circuits which means it's going to help filter out noise it's going to provide search protection and it's going to provide even clean power to all of your pedals individually now this is a really popular option this is the voodoo Labs pedal power 2 plus this is an old standby in fact I've had this on my board for years but I'm not actually going to be using this power supply on my board and here's why there's three things you need to be aware of when you're providing power to a pet and those are voltage polarity and amperage so voltage is pretty straightforward most common stompbox style pedals run on nine volts like you would get from a 9-volt battery so when you're picking out a power supply guys are so many plosives in this segment when you're choosing a power supply it's important to pick one that has God now I'm now I'm aware of it and every time I say a word with and it's like getting in my head so when you're choosing a power supply it's important to still there so when you're choosing a power supply it's important to choose one that has an abundance of nine volt outlets got it because the reality is you're probably gonna have a majority of nine volt powered pedals on you got it's still there but not all pedals run on line volts this JHS color box for example takes 18 volts if you run nine volts to this pedal it's just not gonna work or something like an even tight h9 takes 12 volts so it's important to look at the pedals that you're going to be using on your board and figure out what their voltage needs are now because there's gonna be a wide variety of pedals on my board I don't know exactly what type of power requirements they're all going to need so because of that this voodoo labs unit is not gonna work for me because it only offers nine volt outlets now the next thing to consider is polarity now polarity is important because if you get this wrong you can actually damage a pedal now the good news is most common pedals out there run on sensor negative polarity but you should always check by either looking on the pedal or in the owner's manual or online now this mr. boost from green child here has it printed on the bottom of the pedal with this little diagram here now this diagram is showing that this pedal takes center negative power and you can tell by looking at that filled in circle with the minus sign next to it now common exceptions to this rule are even tide pedals which often take Center positive polarity and to run one of those you're gonna need an adaptor plug which switches the polarity from sensor negative to Center positive and the last thing to consider is amperage or how much current a pedal draws in order to run properly again most common stompboxes are gonna run on 100 milliamps or less but a lot of modern pedals that are more robust or have digital signal processing built into them why're a higher current draw so let's say for example there was a delay pedal that I wanted to put on my board Villante sorry I'm still trying to get over this cold I would need to make sure I had a power supply that provided at least 400 milliamps of power to power that pedal prop there it is again if you under power a pedal a lot of times it'll sound weird you'll get strange artifacts especially with digital pedals like delays and reverbs or they just flat-out won't work now I've owned power supplies from a variety of different companies voodoo labs chalks one spot Strymon and the reality is they've all been great but for this board I've decided to go with the Strymon Zuma for my application the Zuma is the perfect option it's got nine outlets two of which are switchable between 9 12 and 18 volts and every outlet provides up to 500 milliamps of power so I can run my standard stompbox pedals or I could run nine full-sized Sriman or even tide pedals now when I decided on the Zuma I reached out to Strymon and they were gracious enough to sponsor this bill by providing me the Zuma for free so take that into consideration when watching these videos they're not paying for these videos but they did give me the power supply for free so those are the first steps you need to take to build a great pedal board if you have any questions leave them in the comment section down below and I'll either respond to them there or answer them in the next video in the series also if you want a list of the things I'm going to be using to build this pedal board that's going to be linked in the description box down below those are Amazon affiliate links so if you buy through those links I get a small Commission which helps me out in making these videos and if you want to directly support the channel and me you can check out the green room down below as well it's a cool little community where you can have access to download my original music have one-on-one Skype lessons with me every month or just hang out and be part of the discussions going on over there also if you're a Kemper user be sure to check out my original Kemper profiles through my website Rhett shell calm and there you can also find a link to my contact information if you want to get in touch with me anyways I'm super excited about this pedal board bill and excited to continue with these videos I hope you enjoyed this one if you haven't done so already please subscribe and click the bell icon to me know when I'm posting the next video in the series and that's going to do it I'm Rachel thanks for watching and remember there is no plan B

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 617,794

Keywords: How To Build A Pedalboard, Rhett Shull, rhett shull pedalboard, pedalboard building tips, pedalboard build 2018 what not to do, pedalboard build, how to build a pedalboard from scratch, how to build a worship pedalboard, how to build a small pedalboard, how to build a custom pedalboard, strymon zuma, strymon volante, strymon zuma pedaltrain, pedaltrain pt 1, pedaltrain classic 1, diy pedalboard, diy pedalboard build

Id: NLu82APH3lA

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019