Quick Pedal Board Build
As a working guitarist I find myself building one pedalboard or more a week for my jobs. This “build out” isn’t a from scratch notion as I’ve accumulated a bevy of boards from Pedaltrain and Mono over the years. The process though is useful for me because each show I play is different. The three boards here see a lot of use. The Nano uses a Cioks DC5 power unit and fits in the MONO Tick case which is great for single guitars in the MONO Vertigo bag (like the jazz gig). The larger Nano+ and Metro 16 use CIOKS and Strymon supplies and have stout bags that give me room for my board and cables and small accessories like slide and capo.
I use whichever I need to get the job done and have two Nanos, a MONO LITE, and Nano max to build on. Case in point, this week’s engagements: I have a jazz big band show Thursday evening, a hip hop show Friday night and a double header Saturday with an acoustic duo show followed by another hip hop show. Those shows all require different setups from a jazz box, full hollowbody guitar, an Xotic S style , and an acoustic guitar and mandolin for the dates. We’re going to look at the hip hop board.
We start with the Pedaltrain Nano+ which was loaded up from last week’s corporate party gig. I removed all the patch and power cabling from the Nano+ and put them beside the Metro 16 I intend to populate for this weekend’s gigs. I layout my board order- Xotic Wah-Custom Fuzz-JHS AT-NU-X SCF-EQD Dispatch Master-Polytune Mini-DSM Humboldt Simplifier. The signal chain is how I prefer to organize my tone and is what I feel sounds best for me.
I then patch everything into the board and do a final check out of functionality prior to putting it up the case for the show. This process gets repeated for each iteration of my rig I need. For the acoustic show I’ll use a Trace Elliot Acoustic all in one pedal and may go direct into the amp for the jazz gig or I may make a nano sized board with a boost and delay.
By keeping my pedals organized I can utilize them to their potential and keep myself ready for the next job. Stop by Rusty’s and see how we can help you use your pedals and board to it’s fullest potential.
