Guitar Pedalboards

Constantine and I began chatting about pedals and pedalboards yesterday, so I thought I'd post my pedalboard and await comments/suggestions. If you have a pedalboard, please post a pic and a few comments about it.

I'm pretty proud of this board, as I built it from scratch (and I'm not a carpenter or handyman). Of course, I had input and help from various friends.

Notes:
- pedals are not in order of signal chain, but rather by the how often I turn them on/off
- Phil Keaggy originally got me hooked on looping 10 years or so, but at present I use the looper mostly for songwriting and practice
- the EHX Bass9 pedal is my secret weapon for throwing in bass guitar in church on the fly, and for recording bass parts onto the looper
- I added the SansAmp about 5 years ago so I didn't have to bring an amp to church and mic it, etc... I love it!
- I added the 1Spots a year or two after I built this pedal and found out the pedal was too shallow to fit the regular power supplies; so it cost a bit more to buy the extra shallow version; and then I had to get 2 b/c it didnt have enough outputs for me; I'm thankful I had some extra cash that year b/c I for sure couldn't afford them now
- I've gone through a handful of delays and overdrives and the ones I have know fit my playing style and genres I enjoy
- I love the Boss Compressor b/c it gives an indicator of how many dBs are being quieted

Wow, yours is so neat and orderly.  My pedal board changes so often because I experiment a lot these days.  
I typically have no more than 4-5 pedals at a time, including a tuner. 

How did you decide where to put the compressor?   I am having problems with the compressor washing out the other pedals that follow it.  But I've always put it early in the chain.  Maybe I need to rethink that.

Constantine wrote:Wow, yours is so neat and orderly.  My pedal board changes so often because I experiment a lot these days.  
I typically have no more than 4-5 pedals at a time, including a tuner. 

How did you decide where to put the compressor?   I am having problems with the compressor washing out the other pedals that follow it.  But I've always put it early in the chain.  Maybe I need to rethink that.

I'm so sorry, Constantine, I missed this post from a few weeks ago.

Like I said in the previous post, I've got 20 years of playing around with my pedalboard. Now that I'm 40+ I pretty much know what I'm using my board for and which pedals I need for that sound. For exampls, I played around with flangers and choruses for about a decade, trying to thicken up my clean strumming. I finally just gave up, recognizing that my electric would never sound like an acoustic (my Fishman acoustic amp has chorus and it sounds beautiful with an acoustic or electric violin). 

I actually do not have alot of experience with compressors, Constantine. This is the first one I've put on my pedalboard, and for aforementioned reasons I love it. However, the specific reason I'm using it is to tame the volume differences in only clean circumstances: 1) strumming and 2) between strumming and picking, 3) picking while using the bass replication pedal. As the only effects I would use after those are delay, I have no problems with sound washing out. 

For ease of use, I often leave the compressor on when I'm using my overdrive pedal. But I usually turn it off with high gain distortion, because it introduces some noise into the signal.

What pedals do you mostly use on your pedalboard? Although I've never tried it on a pedalboard, there could be an argument made for putting the compressor last (like using it on the master channel or during the mastering stage) to smooth out the volume of your final sound.

My compressor is also in my noise gate effects loop to help quiet it down.

Christian Thrash Rules wrote:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ONCyJkDf_WNABW2JaiZbOO2rJ-iOUwJu/view?usp=sharing

I'm not sure why, but I just noticed your video now! Nice work! There's pedals there that I would like to have.

The only reason I have two power supplies is because the low profile ones I had to get to fit underneath my pedalboard didn't have as many outputs. If I ever build another pedalboard I'll make it deeper so I can fit more stuff underneath.

I just bit the bullet and made the biggest pedalboard change in my life--I sold most of my individual pedals and bought a multi-effects.

I ended up buying the Boss GT1000core. I know many of the others would have worked for me but it came down to a few reasons: 1) availability, 2) price, 3) size, 4) computing power.

So far I'm REALLY happy with it. I played our yearly gospel jamboree gig 2 weeks ago with it. I was able to create patches for all the different instruments I used: electric guitar, acoustic guitar and electric violin. It made the transitions seamless.

I don't mind that it doesn't have an XLR out b/c I always make my looping station the last pedal in my chain, and then go into a DI Box that I have on my board.

What is the Boss pedal on top? There's this pedal that released just a few days ago that I want soooooooo bad. It's the JHS Hard Drive, a SUPER versatile distortion, and the highest gain distortion ever made by JHS. It can do Rat tones, DS-1, Marshall, Friedman BE-OD, and everything in-between, it's crazy. Anyways, I made some changes to the board so heres an update. https://1drv.ms/i/s!AgFl-QwC-1GmgQ_dTMEfUDaOxF8b?e=62kkDb
The board is Ernie Ball Volume Jr. -> Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner -> Cry Baby Wah -> MXR Dyna Comp -> JHS 3 Series Overdrive -> Donner Stylish Fuzz(Big Muff style fuzz) -> Boss ML-2 Metal-Core Distortion -> EarthQuaker Black Eye Boost -> Boss DD-7 Digital Delay -> Boss RV-6 Reverb -> Electro-Harmonix Silencer Noise Gate -> Boss RC-1 Loop Station. The power supplies are a 1 Spot Pro CS-12, and a Strich SPS-20. It's made with two actual boards so I can use just one side or both together. I'm hoping to add a DigiTech Whammy Ricochet or Boss Harmonist, and the JHS Hard Drive(it would replace the Metal-Core).

Christian Thrash,

Sorry for not replying, like a month ago! I must have missed this post.

The boss Pedal in my pic is a metalzone. I have always favoured BOSS pedals (see my former pedalboard near the top of this thread) and I have used a metalzone for my distortion for over 20 years. Even though I'm discovering many cool, new sounds with my GT1000Core, I am not ready to part with the MT-2. And so I have it plugged into one of the FX loops of the GT, ready to be turned on at anytime!

I added the Digi-Tech Whammy Ricochet and it's AMAZING!! I would definitely recommend it for any guitar player.