The Metamorphic Guitar Pedal Board
If you are a guitar player chances are that you went through a time when your effect pedals were flying all over the floor in a pathetic disarray of ¼” connectors, 9v power supply cables, etc. to a point when nobody could easily distinguish where is the input or the output.
Things would complicate if you would decide to go out gigging with this chaotic pedal setup. Your aspiring band starts pulling off a gig here and there with probably 2-3 song sets at first among other beginner bands waiting in line to step up. Setup time is limited to probably 5-10 minute so you frantically try to arrange your pedals hoping to match the previous configuration you had at practice time. With some luck, things click, but so many times you discover that you forgot two of the ¼” cables at home, or one of the pedal’s battery is dead, or one of the inter-connect cables has short, etc.
That’s when you decide to run out to the hardware store and buys the cheapest piece of plywood board, you cut it to an arbitrary dimension and literally glue (or in the best scenario, tie-wrap) to secure your expensive pedals to the board.
Definitely a better method than the one before, but still, there are so many weaknesses in this configuration you didn’t think of like accidentally knocking off some of the pedal knobs during transport or the impossibility of re-arranging your ever growing numbers of guitar pedal arsenal since all of the initial ones were secured to the board Mom’s glue gun or worst with Krazy Glue.
And of course by this time, you realize that it is time to save for a serious pedal board, custom made, to fit the multitude of effects acquired by this time. But where to turn to? Who to go to? There seems to be such an intimidating plethora of guitar pedal boards manufacturers that poor guitar-Joe feels like an ant in a world of elephants.
I went through these times, and I’ve learned some facts and key features to look for in a guitar pedal board that would suit your need. I’ll try to talk about these in this blog in the days to come.
