DIY Pedal Board…

I now have enough pedals, effects and foot switches to justify the need for a pedal board to house them all and reduce the clutter and tangle of wires.

While a commercial pedal board would be nice, they do seem to be very expensive ($100 plus) for what they are which is mainly some metal welded together. Add in an isolated power supply which, since my vocal unit needs 12v, is doubly expensive and I was looking at way too much money for what is basically a cable organizer.

So, being the cheapskate that I am, I built my own. A length of 3×1 pine, a 2 foot x 2 foot x 1/4 inch piece of plywood, a power strip, a chassis power socket I had lying around from another project, some knock in screw inserts and some screws and washers,some Velcro and a couple of hours with the drill and saw and voila:

 

Since I already had a bunch of isolated power supplies (the wall warts) for each pedal I just plugged them into the power strip that is mounted to the rear wall of the housing. I had to use a small three inch extension to allow one to fit but it works fine. Originally I just fed the lead from the power strip out the side of the box but then I remembered I had a chassis connector lying around so I dug it out, cut a hole in the side of the box, cut the cord and soldered the wires to the connecter and shrink wrapped each wire/connector joint for safety then wrapped it all in some electrical tape.

Since the power strip is actually a surge protector as well it has a switch on it so to avoid having to take the top off to reset it if it tripped I just cut a small hole in the top board above where it sits so that I can reach down and reset it. One of the power leads also comes up through there. I also drilled a couple of other holes for the other leads and for a little cooling.

The top board is held in place by four screws that go into knock-in screw inserts in the side rails so it takes all of a 15 seconds to remove the top with a battery powered drill/screwdriver bit.

The only downside to my layout currently is that I like to use the three button switch for the loop pedal but it seems like it’s almost impossible to get a short (12 inch or so) stereo patch cable with right angle plugs so for now I am using a regular (and somewhat long) cable with the excess stuffed inside the board which means my pedals are not quite where I want them. I have ordered some right angle plugs and a short microphone cable (because it seems you cannot buy just a foot of microphone cable!) that I will cut up to make a patch cable of the correct size. It won’t really make that much difference to the layout but it will just be neater and satisfy my need to ‘do it right’

 

Tags: pedalboard