Grateful Dead Music Forum

I'm slimming down from my rack to a combo amp and pedals. Any recommendation on a pedal boards? I was looking at Furman or SKB one.



I heard the velcro doesn't work well with the Furman.

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So nobody uses pedal boards here?

the Furman looks really nice and neat, Chris.

I do it on the cheap and messy w/ a bare bones Warwick pedal board and a power strip loaded with multiple P/S's... lots of bundled cords floating around, etc

I use a Pedaltrain. Doesn't have built in power or any of that jazz. Just a great frame for laying out your pedals. I really like it as it is an open frame design so you can get underneath it, run kind of a subway line of cables underneath everything. You just need a power supply like the Voodoo Labs pedal power which can be easily mounted to the Pedaltrain.

Also comes with some of the baddest ass velcro I have ever come across in my many years of velcro related encounters.

http://www.pedaltrain.com/

I kind of like the pedaltrain idea. I'd like to utilize a true bypass switch at some point and this concept would be good to hide the chords.


Tom, that's me now. Pedals in and out of a crate, it sucks. I'd like to put a cover over the top of it, lock it down and be out of there.

That USED to be me - FOREVER...

I started playing in a solid band in 1990. My pedals always came out of a milk crate & were set up on the ground. It was only 18 years later that I FINALLY decided to heed the advice of everyone and buy a pedal board!!! (shame on ME!)

I bought an SKB SB45. It has a built-in power conditioner which is great. I use 3 kinda big pedals: the EH Q-Tron, the EH Octave Multiplexer and a Dunlop CryBaby Wah. SO, I kinda need a lot of room. It's a pretty big board. I LOVE IT!!!! AND, I bought one of those kits where you can cut custom-length patch cables! SICKLEBERRY!!!

I plug my amp right into one of the 3 outlets, plug my EH Q-Tron into one and still have room to plug in my Roland GK-09, should I wanna use it. It is, far and away, the 2nd best musical investment I've ever made!!!

That's what I'm talking about!

I read reviews on HC about them, (i can't stand reading musicians reviews sometimes, it's one extreme to the next and you never know when it's a 15 year old kid doing the review) anyway someone said that skb was a tone sucker and I steered clear of it. I definitely like the case it comes with. Thanks Pappypgy!

Dozin -

No problem...it is certainly NOT a tone-sucker. My tone is as phat as ever. I've A/B'd it (direct guitar to amp and guitar through pedalboard to amp) - no difference.

One of my pedals is a BOSS Noise Reduction pedal - that seems to make very little difference in my sound as well, other than eliminating the majority of the buzz when I flick on the BOSS Distortion/Overdrive pedal.

It's great...great size if you have a lot of pedals. Here's what I have on it:

BOSS Noise Reduction > BOSS Stage Tuner > EH Octave Multiplexer > BOSS Distortion/Overdrive > Dunlop CryBaby Wah > EH Q-Tron > Soundtank Delay (next pedal to be replaced, most likely by a BOSS DD3) > Beringer Phase Shifter.


I will have some examples of how it all sounds w/ the SBM Custom through the board and into my Deluxe Reverb up on our site in a few weeks....the videos from Potter County XV didn't come out with great sound quality...oh well.

Thanks for your input

Dozin wrote:Tom, that's me now. Pedals in and out of a crate, it sucks. I'd like to put a cover over the top of it, lock it down and be out of there.

No, the Warwick PB does have a suitcase-style cover w/ handle. It just doesn't have any built in power supplies. My pedals stay chained together inside, along with the power strip to which is plugged in: the Phasor II AC cord, two 9v wall warts, and an 18v wall wart for the AD-80 delay.

So at show's end, all I do is tuck in the power strip cord, tuck in the Y cable from my guitar, put the cover on and load it out.

Dozin wrote:So nobody uses pedal boards here?

Hey Dozin'...

I've been using this for 4 years now without incident. Got it for free at a guitar show in Nashville. I've tried every other kind of pedal housing. I even cloned Jerry's effects cabinet but couldn't justify draggin' it around.

It's basically a canvas bag but it works. I play just about every night around the city and it certainly has taken a beating. If you can get over how cheap it looks, you might just dig it.

The units are powered by a Godlyke transformerless 9v supply. The 2 MXR units are 1980 block logo without DC 9v power jack. The Godlyke unit comes with converters so you can hook it up to the 9v leads on the Phase 100 and Distortion+.

Everything is true bypass through the loopmaster.

It looks crammed in there but nothing has ever failed and it sits perfectly on top of my Twin Reverb or my Mark I....

I use that same Furman board - love it, velcro works fine... almost too well when I wanted to change the chain and the hook tape on the bottom of the pedals wanted to stay on the board rather than the pedal.

A guy I know said the problem with the Furman board is if you leave the pedal board in your car and it's warm the velcro will melt. That probably would happen to any velcro I imagine. I kind of like the skb pro 55 and how you can hide the chords.

fwiw here's the one I'm using:




and open (smaller model pictured)



I dont need to mess with velcro (the adhesive does alway melt IME)- the top case foam fits snugly down over the pedals and they don't move much unless I really slam the case around.

One thing though, is that shiny ribbed aluminum gets VERY visibly dinged up when packing it among other gear. Not that I care.