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We unravel the mysteries behind pedal board design and building.
Back in the mid Sixties, guitarists had a choice of maybe three or four pedals, and the players who were far out enough to use them all at once connected them together with cables several feet long, and used 20-foot coiled cables on each side of the pedal chain to go between their guitar and amp. From a modern perspective, this was not an ideal arrangement, because the cable runs led to all sorts of noise and tone sucking. But that’s also how some players got those “classic rock” sounds that guitarists still crave after all these years.
Flash forward five decades, and pedal chains have become far more sophisticated than a few boxes arranged on a stage floor. Many players build their own pedalboards, and manufacturers service varied needs with simple carrying cases (that sometimes include Velcro strips to seat your pedals on a floorboard), pre-fab boards with tiered shelves, and rugged tour monsters with regulated power, tuner jacks, onboard headphone amps, and other goodies. And if you’re not the do-it-yourself type—and wield sufficient coin—you can have a pedalboard and effects system custom-built to your every whim by experts.
If you go the D.I.Y route, however, the road can be daunting. For one, you’re faced with a plethora of pedals—including multieffects units that offer dozens of effects, and state-of-the-art modeling units that emulate vintage stompboxes. And that’s not all. Besides having literally hundreds of pedals to choose from, there are dozens of different types of cables, and tons of associated products such as power supplies and buffering devices. If you get anything wrong—well, you may get lucky, and everything will sound brilliant to you anyway. Then again, your attempt at building the perfect pedalboard could be bedeviled by