This how-to is meant to serve as an example to any one else who, like me, is inexperienced with building a pedal board. It’s a detailed account of the steps I took to complete the board; from laying out the pedals to wiring the finished board. I’m going to assume that the reader is total novice to the world of pedal effects, and share whatever knowledge may be necessary along the way. If you feel you know something and find the information redundant or not pertaining to you, feel free to skip ahead.
The project was an attempt to make a professional, practical pedal board using the cheapest materials available in a relatively short amount of time. From start to finish, the board cost me about $60 USD (not including the power supply, which I already had,) and took about 5 hours to build.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at preston(at)prestonsmusic(dot)com or leave a comment on the original post. Don’t forget to have fun building it- take pride in hard work, and inevitably you’ll see your efforts pay off.
Alright, I’ll start at the very beginning:
· Step 1 · Laying Out The Pedals
The first thing I did was determine the layout of the pedals on the board.
The arrangement of the pedals could rely on their frequency of use, their effect type, or grouping for effect loops, depending on a musician’s personal preferences. However, before you just throw your pedals all willy-nilly in some random order, there are a few things to consider. If you’ve never put much thought to the matter of pedal order before, there are a few key things to know in order to get the best sound out of your gear.
The following is a common order for a chain of effects:
IN» tuners → filters → compressors → overdrive → modulation → volume → reverb & delay OUT»
1. Tuners – the first pedal in the signal path will receive the most honest tone from your guitar, and therefore it’s logical to have that pedal be the tuner. Of course, I sincerely doubt there’s enough difference in pitch between the input from your guitar and the output to a tuner at the end of an effects chain to really affect your tuner’s function.
2. Filters – (envelope filters, auto wah, wah pedals, etc.) - Any dynamically-controlled filters are triggered by the signal attack from your instrument, so it makes sense to have them as early in the effects chain as possible so the original signal isn’t too distorted by other effects first.
3. Compressors – Compressors are best used with a clean signal first because of the way they work. It belongs earlier in the chain to eliminate noise when used in conjunction with other effects, and so as to not affect (for example) the rawness of an overdrive pedal or the volume changes in a tremolo.
4. Overdrive (distortion, fuzz) - Since overdrive pedals generate a lot of harmonics, they can easily create ugly tones when fed by a modulated signal. For instance: A chorus effect is achieved by splitting a guitar’s signal and modulating the second signal’s pitch. If the clashing notes of the shifting pitch are then multiplied by adding harmonics, you’ll get some really strange out-of-tune tones. So don’t feed overdrive pedals with modulation pedals unless you’re looking for something like that (and in general, you’re not).
5. Modulation – It is time to add your flangers, phasers, choruses pedals here. They breathe the best here in relationship with the overdrives/distortion pedals ahead of them.
6. Volume (tremolo, volume pedal) – Placing volume effects here won’t alter the signal level entering the overdrive pedals, helping to maintain a fully affected tone, and will also let delay and reverb pedals complete their tails when the volume is turned completely down.
7. Reverb & Delay – They are the last pedals in the chain since they are hard to tame if placed before overdrives – they can produce spikes in the effect level and upset the overdrives. Also, they become unaffected by the volume effects, as noted above. Another reason to put reverbs and delays at the end of the chain is that it places whatever pedals you are using to sound like they are in the same space.
Of course, this is all just for your consideration. You should place your pedals in whatever order works for you, and don’t hesitate to contradict some of the things I just explained. First of all, I don’t even follow my own advice most of the time and place pedals in an order that suits a desired sound. Secondly, nothing is born out of conformity- experiment to find some new sound if you feel like it.
If you have no idea what category some of your pedals might fall under, wikipedia has a good article on guitar effects with examples of pedals for each type.
After I had the pedal order, I needed to make sure they’d fit on the board in the case.
