Last week I wrote a short blog about my late birthday/early Christmas present... a new pedalboard for my guitar effects and stomp boxes. The photo I included only had my wah pedal installed. Over the weekend I loaded up the board with my stomp boxes and wired it up. I promised @gideonstargrave I'd post some photos, so take a look:
In the above photo, the pedal board is at the bottom and above it is my primary amp, a Bugera 333XL-212. Just behind the pedalboard is my VOX Mini 5 practice amp.
The above photo shows the pedalboard close up. The stomp boxes and effects are as follows (from right to left, bottom to top): Dunlop Cry Baby Wah Wah, BOSS Super Shifter, BOSS Compression Sustainer, BOSS Blues Driver, BOSS Mega Distortion, BOSS Stereo Chorus, BOSS Noise Suppressor, BOSS Flanger, BOSS Digital Delay, BOSS Fender '65 Reverb Amp and BOSS Loop Station. There's a tuner above the Wah Was pedal, but it's not attached to the board. That space is reserved for a BOSS Chromatic Tuner or something similar. The empty space on the left is reserved for a volume pedal.
The above photo is similar to the first one, but my Ibanez RG-Series 7-String guitar is included. I also have a Westone Spectrum LX electric guitar, a Jackson RRXT electric guitar, a Squire Telecaster, an Ibanez acoustic Performance guitar, an Ovation Celebrity acoustic-electric guitar and an Epiphany Thunderbird IV electric bass guitar.
The pedalboard is called a Holeyboard, manufactured and sold by Chemistry Design Werks. The stomp boxes and pedals are secured to the board with cable (zip) ties. All of the stomp boxes and pedals are powered by a Phoenix Power Supply, which is located beneath the raised board. The holes in the board allow you to put the stomp boxes and pedals wherever and however densely packed as you want. In my case, I put most of them as close together as possible, but the wider spaces between some stomp boxes were done deliberately... I need the extra room to plug in the cables that go to the effects loop on my Bugera amplifier.
Here's how my signal chain runs: guitar plugs into the wah wah pedal (when I get the tuner, the guitar will plug into the tuner and the tuner will plug into the wah wah pedal. Next in the chain is the Super Shifter, then the Compression Sustainer, Blues Driver, Mega Distortion and Noise Suppressor. Output from the Noise Suppressor goes into one of the inputs on the front of the amp. The rest of the stomp boxes plug into the effects loop, which has its input (send) and output (return) on the back of the amp. This order is Stereo Chorus, Flanger, Digital Delay, '65 Fender Reverb Amp and Loop Station. There is extra space between the Flanger and Digital Delay so that one I get the volume pedal, it will be placed between the Flanger and Digital Delay in the signal chain. This will allow me to lower or cut off all volume, but allow any delay (echo) and reverb to fade out gradually.
Besides the spaces reserved for a tuner and volume pedal, I could probably squeeze in one more pedal, though I'm just about out of spots on the power supply. I'd have to swap it out for a larger one or find a way to add a second one.
I do have some stomp boxes on one of my Amazon Wishlists that I would use to replace a few of my current stomp boxes or add to what I already have: Ibanez Tube Screamer, BOSS Tremolo, Way Huge Green Rhino Overdrive, Dunlop Echoplex Delay, Dunlop Germanium Fuzz Face, and a BOSS Metal Zone Distortion. I also have an MXR Tap Tempo Switch Pedal on the list to plug into the Echoplex. This allows you to tap your foot to the beat so that the echo (delay) matches the beat of the song.
So that's what my pedalboard looks like.
@gideonstargrave also asked me to post some videos of me playing, switching effects on and off. I had already been thinking about starting to create some videos of me playing. I have a few riffs I like to play for practice, plus I like to use the intro to Iron Maiden's Wasted Years as alternate picking practice. I also could play some of my original songs, with and/or without vocals. So I'l be doing that sometime in 2017. I also think I'll recreate the post I have on my personal website that talks about my musical background and all of my gear. And I have another post on my personal website that talks about guitarists: my list of 5 underrated guitarists, my picks for the 5 greatest guitarists of all time, and my top 5 favorite guitarists. Perhaps I will post that one here too.
Stay Tuned...
DeadGuitarist
