Small Guitar Pedalboard Build for the Meat and Potatoes Effects
Here’s an example of a very well executed small guitar pedalboard build. The pedal selection is of course a very personal thing. That said, for a lot of guitarists, this smaller pedalboard would cover most bases for many gigging situations.
The fact that it doesn’t have modulation or a fuzz pedal is not a mistake. This was done on purpose to allow for flexibility. See, the Origin Effects Cali76 Compact Deluxe compressor is a buffered pedal. To allow this pedal board the ability to run any type off fuzz pedal, the idea is to patch your fuzz pedal of choice on the floor right before the board. You then plug the guitar into it, then from there you plug into the main input of the pedalboard’s patchbay. The auxiliary external 9v power power at the top of the board can then be used to power that fuzz.
Patch in Modulation
This also works if you would like to run a modulation pedal. You can use that external 9v power port to power it, but instead of patching the modulation pedal before the main input, you would patch it into the middle two plugs of the patch bay. Those are the send and return for the board that allows you to patch in any pedal, or an amp’s pre-amp, after the Browne Protein overdrive, yet before the time-based effects which is this case are the Universal Audio Starlight delay and Universal Audio Golden Reverberator. Essentially, this patch points allows you to put anything you want right in the middle of the signal chain.
Small Guitar Pedalboard Parts list
Many of the details are in the video below. However, here’s a list of what’s on it.
Pedalboard platform: Creation Music Company Aero 18×7
Patchbay is by American Loopers.
The power supply is a Strymon Ojai R30 with 5 outputs. One of the outputs is set at 18v to power the Cali76. The external power port is set to 9v and center negative so that it works with most pedals safely.
The power cables are by Strymon with right angle Kobiconn DC connectors on the bottom end to allow for custom lengths. I’m using green-backed 3M Dual-Lock TB4750 / SJ4570 (low-profile) to affix the pedal into the board. This low-profile Dual-Lock Velcro is not as strong as the higher profile stuff, but it’s more than enough for this particular situation.
The signal cable is Mogami 2319 which is a very popular size for pedalboards because it’s not as thick as instrument cable, nor as thin as the 2314 variety. Additionally, a small guitar pedalboard like this uses short cable runs, so Mogami 2319 is ideal because you’re not too worried about cable capacitance or noise for such a short run. The audio plugs at the top are right angle Squareplug SP500. At the bottom, for the patch bay I’m using straight SPS5 Squareplug connectors. Everything is soldered.
Watch the Video
The signal chain goes like this. Input 1 in the patch bay goes into the Cali 76 Compressor and then into the Browne Amplification Protein. From that pedals output it goes back to the patch bay to jack 2. From here you can go to the amp’s input, or just patch it back into jack 3. Then the signal goes into the UA Starlight Delay and then into the UA Golden Reverb. Finally it goes back to out, to jack 4 where it can go to the amps effects return, or to the front of the amp if you’re running it all in front.
