and i thought I'd keep a record of it, write about it and take a few photos of the process. For anyone that may be interested in what I'm doing, or if you're thinking about doing it as well. I plan to include any expenditures along the way too.
This is what i plan to put onto my board:
ISP Decimator
Boss tuner
Line 6 DL4 x2
Line 6 FM4
Empress Tremolo
Visual Sound Chorus
EHX Nano Phaser
EHX Holy Grail Plus
Digitech Whammy
Dual Bypass Looper
Sennheiser wireless
Pedal Power AC
Pedal Power 2+
Day 1:
so i begun with taking apart my old board, and laying my pedals along it as a guide, to figure out where i wanted to put everything. Heres a snap of that, along with a photo of the case alone: note the white power strip was there for a reference for me, as that is where i will put my mains power, either a 2 strip or a junction box of some sort.
So this is the case that i have to work with, it was built for me a few years ago at C&C cases in croydon. The exact measurements of the board that will fit inside are: 950mm x 360mm with a maximum depth of 24mm to sit level in the base(the lid obviously has a lot more room, to fit the pedals)
So the first thing i did was go to mitre 10, and buy some wood and paint.
I bought the following:
1200x450 12mm ply $21.10
915 x 457 12mm ply $15.81
Flat black paint $5.95
I then measured and cut the 1200x450 ply to the main boards size(950x360)
heres a photo of that:
I used a jigsaw to cut the wood out, and an electric sander to smoothen and curve the edges of the wood.
Then i put the wood inside the case to make sure it fit, and laid the pedals out on it.
I had two options of how i was going to go about putting the board in. As is said before the depth of the base is 24mm, in previous boards i've made for the case, ive used 12mm ply, then put 12mm skirts underneath, so it sits flush and also gives me a large amount of room underneath the board to hide leads and cables.
Unfortunately since this time around im building a second tier above two power supplies and a wireless, the lid doesn't give me enough room to do this. That brings me to my first option, i could mount the power supplies underneath on the actual base of the case, and cut a hole through the main board so it slotted over the top, which would lower the wireless and two supplies by 24mm, which would give me plenty of room above for pedals.
I didn't really want to physically mount anything to my case, as if i ever want to rebuild the board again, i wont have holes everywhere. So my second option was to not put the skirts on, and have the board sit 12mm down inside of the case. This would give me enough room on top to sit pedals, but the downside would be that all my leads will be exposed and not hidden. The only drawback to that is i like my board to look neat.
I've gone with the second option, and im going to make all of the leads very neat with cable ties and some form of pins to hold the leads in place. I'm not sure what im going to use yet, that'll come later. haha.
So i sat all of my pedals for the bottom row on the board in the case, which looked like this:
And that concluded day 1.
Day 2:
I begun by measuring the length of the tier and cutting it out, i set it to just the right height so it would give a bit of clearance above the power supplies, but so it was still low enough so pedals on top would clear the roof of the board.
The tier is going to sit 55mm above the main board, and its around 650mm long, and 135mm wide
To connect the sides to the actual step, i used aquadere glue, and some small nails. I first put the nails in until they punctured the other side of the tier, then glued the sides on, then nailed the nails all the way through, as shown in these photos:
and the finished step:
So again after sanding the wood down and curving the edges, i placed the step onto the board above the power and wireless, it looked like this:
And with the pedals on it:
(The white cardboard is where the empress tremolo will go)
With the step being that long, i thought eventually it would weaken in the centre, and be prone to snapping, there was about a 15mm gap between it and the wireless:
So i got a 12mm piece of ply, cut it to be a little smaller than the wireless, and nailed/glued it to the bottom of the step:
and heres a photo of the nails on the step from the top:
I then glued a 5mm thick piece of foam to the bottom of the 12mm ply, therefore the 15mm gap was filled with 12mm of ply, and 5mm of foam, making it 17mm. The foam will squash down into the wireless and pad it aswell as support the pedals above it, when being pressed.
Heres a pic of the foam being glued:
Pretty exciting stuff.
So after waiting half hour for that to glue, i took the bricks and phone book off, and trimmed the foam. heres a couple of pics:
And heres a photo of the step ontop of the wireless. Perfect fit!
After putting the foam on i realised i should have painted the wood first, so when it comes to painting i'll just have to tape up the foam. no big deal!
that concluded day 2, tomorrow is christmas day so i'm not going t obe doing anything then. But next i'll be painting it, then mounting everything.
I've got a couple of ideas for mounting, the first i've had is to take apart a bike chain and use the links as brackets. I've seen a few boards with that done and they look great, strong mounts too. The other idea is getting some of the mounts available at valley music in lilydale, theyre $10 for 4 so it's going to cost me an arm and a leg, but they're pretty thick and tough, and have two holes for screws to mount to the board, instead of one.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this, i'll update once i work on it a bit more.
I also have two older boards that i've taken pedals off that are just collecting dust, They're free to a good home. Both are 950mm x 360mm, 12mm thick with 12mm skirts underneath. pics below:
Board1:
Underneath:
Board2:
Underneath:
Also, if anyone is interested in what configuration i'll be running these pedals, here you go:
Guitar -> Wireless
Wireless Receiver -> Bypass Looper
Loop 1 -> DL4 - FM4 - Holy Grail - Phaser - Tremolo - Chorus
Loop 2 -> Digitech whammy - Boss Tuner
DL4
ISP Decimator
AMP
thanks for reading, i'll have the next update soon!
Chris2
Day 3
So I've finally gotten back to working on my board. Day 3 was kind of spread over a few afternoons.
The first thing i did today was sand down the surfaces of the board and tier, and then i wiped them down with a clean rag and blew off any excess dust with an air gun/compressor.
I taped up the foam panel on the underside of the tier, by using masking tape and then taping some newspaper down onto it.
I gave both sections an undercoat of flat black, to do this i sprayed one side of each, then left it for 20 minutes at a time, both sides of the board/tier got 2 coats then i waited 2 hours for the paint to soft dry, and turned the boards over and did the other side in the same fashion, a coat, then 20 minutes later another coat.
I left these in the sun for two hours then put them inside to dry for 48 hours.
48 hours later i gave the bottom of the tier and board its main coat of gloss black, again i sprayed it, waited 20 minutes then sprayed it again, and then turned it over and gave the top two sprays, and left it to dry for another 48 hours.
After waiting for the paint to dry i figured out where exactly the tier was going to sit on the board, and marked the pedal layout onto the board with a grey pencil, for future reference.
To mount the tier onto the board i am going to put 4 screws on either side, so in total there'll be 8 screws connecting it to the board, i marked these points on either side of the tier, and then marked them onto the board. I then drilled pilot holes for the screws, again both on the tier and board.
Before i can mount the tier i have to mount the pedal powers and the wireless, as they'll be sitting under the tier.
I bought some brackets from valley music to mount the pedal powers and the line 6 pedals, i had to screw them into the side of the pedal powers and then bend them 90 degrees, as seen in these photos:
to mount the line 6 pedals i've had to cut two small bits of rubber out from the bottom of the pedals, so the bracket will reach the screws underneath, as seen in these photos:
without the rubber slits cut out:
and with:
with the brackets connected:
After connecting the brackets to the pedal powers i mounted them, along with the line 6 pedals.
to mount the line 6 pedals as close to the edge as possible, i bent the bracket 90 degrees and i cut small sections out from the side of the board for the bracket and pan head screws to fit into, as shown below:
I did this to give me that small extra bit of room that the bracket would take up, although its only about 1cm, i need every bit of space i can get.
This concluded day 3. I have a few more small things i have to get before i can finish off the board. I've still got to get a few more brackets for pedals, i think i've decided against using the bike chain brackets, so i have to buy a few sets for the rest of the pedals.
I've also decided to run the empress tremolo through my fx loop on my amp, so i have to get a couple of leads to run it to there aswell.
I've also figured out how im going to power the board, i found a 2 way iec lead in dick smith that was $15, it plugs stright into the wall, then splits into two iec connections, which is what i need to run both pedal powers.
The next update shouldn't be too far away.
Day 4
Today i finished my board! =]
I begun by flipping the board and tier over, and lining up the pilot holes i had drilled the previous day, to do this i got 8 toothpicks(one for every hole) and put them all in, weaving and moving the board around until they all fit evenly. As shown below:
and side view:
I then screwed in all of the screws one at a time, taking out only the toothpick for the hole i was about to screw in, so at every point each hole had something lining it up. I also loosely put in every screw so it was about 5mm into the tier before continuing onto the next one, then tightening them all together after they had all been put in.
I used countersunk screws so they would sit in nicely
After mounting the tier i flipped the board back over and mounted the wireless, i had to angle the brackets underneath so they would not intersect with the pedal powers brackets.
Then i organised all of the remaining pedals to go on, attaching brackets to them all, except for the whammy which i'm going to mount using carpet/velcro and cable ties. Heres a photo of all the pedals ready to be mounted:
After preparing them all i got to mounting them one by one.
First was the decimator, which went on the top left corner of the tier, i used 6 of the 8 screw holes provided by the brackets, bending the bottom two up to sit flush against the pedal(i didnt really want to go sideways into the tier with screws, as i didn't have much room to get at it properly.)
Then i mounted the carpet onto the board, it was glued then staple gunned into place.
[IMG]http://i735.photobucket.com/albums/ww359/Chris2as/carpetonboardforwhammy.jpg[/IMG]
Then i placed the whammy on carefully, lining it up, and marked out two holes on the board to the left of the pedal, where the cable ties would go through, i drilled these out, fed the ties through then tightened/cut them around the pedal
The next pedal to mount was the tuner, i fed a lead under its own jacks to minimize space and plugged it into the tuner, then one by one screwed the brackets in.
The next pedal on was the empress, 8 screws, just making sure i left enough room either side to plug/unplug send/return jacks.
The next pedals to go on were the holy grail and the nano, both of these only using 6 screws, in the same fashion as the decimator. Because im using one of those jack to jack leads for these pedals, i had to mount them at the same time.
Thats now all of the pedals mounted minus the looper, which still needs a bit of circuitry work done to the led pcb, so im not going to mount it just yet, it is however fully useable when not plugged into power.
The next thing i did to the board was a little idea i got when i stumbled upon a pedalmaking company in the US called 'trailer trash pedalboards'
They make some kickass boards, and an option they have for boards is instead of using plywood for the main board, they use perspex and mount lights underneath to make it glow.
I dont have all the room/time/money in the world to do this, so i bought myself two simple blue neons from auto barn, $10 each, and measuring just 15cm long.
They run off a car cigarette lighter, but i cut it off and bought two 2.1mm female jacks from dick smith and soldered one onto the end of each neon, allowing it to run off my pedal power. =]
I've daisy chained both to run off the same power source from the 2+, but since these run off 12v normally, and i dont have any 12v outputs left, so ive bridged two 9's and they're running smoothly off 18v.
another point i'd like to mention before i go any further is the leads i am using for this board, they're called 'coreX2' and they're basically a solderless lead, you buy the plugs individually or you can get a pack, which has 8 right angle plugs and 2 straights, along with 20ft of cable.
Basically you just cut the cable to length, shove it up the lead and tighten a screw with an allen key.
They have a pin connected at the bottom of the jack which stabs into the center wire, and the screw that tightens punctures the lead and touches the outside wire, very simple and effective system.
It literally took me about 20 minutes to make leads up for my board, it was so simple, put one jack on, plug it into one of the pedals, run the cable to the pedal i was connecting it to, cut it to length and jam another end on!
I must warn that these leads are very expensive, the pack was about $140. But they are gold plated and are easily the best cables ive ever used. They sound pristine, ive elimanated noise i didnt even know existed in my signal, and my decimator has been turned down lower as theres not as much noise!
/sales pitch
but seriously, if you want some good leads - buy them.
So with that done, i had my completed board, with no power or leads connected
Note the lead from the DL4 to the decimator was just a temporary connection to make sure i could fit a lead in.
I first connected all of my power, and mounted my neons onto the tier, being careful to gaffa down every power lead as it went on, to keep it neat.
Then i cut and connected all of my leads.
I also got adam at valley music to make me two 20ft leads and put them into a loom along with my footswitch lead and another 20ft lead i had. I've now got my send/return, footswitch lead and board -> amp lead all connected together, making my setup a bit neater and much faster!
So here is the completed board, all connected:
And i waited until night to get this shot:
I'm overall pretty happy with the result, it looks great, it sounds great and it works fine. I've got a few more small things to do to it, but its pretty much completed. All i have to do now is get the loopers circuit finished and mount it, get my H20 back once its repaired and mount/connect leads to it, and tidy up all of the leads once those two pedals are on. ill post pictures once thats all done(which won't be for a fortnight or so)
Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read through my updates, its been a pretty fun project, and im about to help a friend make a smaller board tomorrow.
Also let me know if you would like any more information on anything i've done on the board, or any questions about anything.
Chris
No comments:
Post a Comment