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Building A New Small Travel Pedalboard

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building pedalboard travel
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3.7K views 22 replies 13 participants last post by  16  
#1 ·
Right now I gig with two pedalboards, two Palmer Pedalbay 60L Lightweight Variable Pedalboards, the two boards are almost identical in every way except for one having a Wah Wah pedal at the start of the board, and the DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal as the last pedal in the signal path of pedalboard 'A' before it hits the amp head, everything else about these pedalboards are identical, the same pedals in the same order at the same settings, everything is the same, even the power supplies used, the only difference is pedalboard 'A's' signal path begins with a Wah Wah pedal, and ends with the DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal before it enters the first amp head, pedalboard 'B's' signal path begins with a BOSS TU-3, the BOSS TU-3 is the second pedal in the signal path on pedalboard 'A' - I hope this makes sense to people and I won't have to resort to drawing out my signal path with two pedalboards and two amps, this set up allows me to sound like I'm playing up to four guitars at the same time, it really helps me to create a wall of sound and a lot of air movement.* But as you can imagine it's a huge pain to travel with, meaning I have to have a pair of pedalboards permanently set up at both my rehersal space as well as the venue I gig at.

Now what I want to do is build up a small travel size pedalboard with what I consider to be the essential features from my two gigging pedalboards combined onto one small travel friendly size pedalboard, so yesterday I went out and bought a Pedaltrain Metro 20 Pedalboard, this pedal board is big enough for six, maybe seven at a push BOSS size pedals - I don't think I could use pedals any smaller than BOSS pedals due to the size of my feet.*

So right now I'm thinking of the following pedals for my small travel size pedalboard, in the order that they are listed here a BOSS TU-3 for a tuner, BOSS CS-3 Compression/Sustainer Pedal, BOSS DS-1 Distortion Pedal or BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver Guitar Effects Pedal, BOSS CE-5 Chorus Ensemble Guitar Effects, BOSS OC-3 Super Octave Guitar Effects Pedal, BOSS GE-7 Equalizer Guitar Effects Pedal, and finally a BOSS NS-2 Noise Suppressor Guitar Pedal.* As you can see it's basically a BOSS pedal travel pedalboard.*

Now what stopped me from buying these pedals and setting this travel board up today was the BOSS OC-3 Super Octave Guitar Effects pedal, the shop I would use to buy all the pedals doesn't carry this pedal in stock so it will have to be ordered in for me, and I have no experience with it, and to be honest the manual is rubbish worse than rubbish in fact, it doesn't even tell you the pedals range will it be able to raise what I'm playing by two octaves just like my DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal currently does, I know it won't have the sweep of the DigiTech nor the expression style control - that's one of the main reasons I'm looking at it is because it is not controlled like an expression pedal, but will it raise or lower the notes by at least two octaves when the pedal in engaged - even the youtube reviews for this pedals are rubbish and tell you nothing about the pedal.* The other option is to go with a pitch shifter like the Boss PS-6 Harmony Effects Pedal, again I can't find any information as to how much pitch manipulation is available on the pedal, half an octave, one, two...

What I really want to be able to do is to raise the pitch of the note I'm playing without having to control it like I do on my DigiTech, like an expression pedal, I want to turn the pedal on and my pitch is raised, I don't want to sweep up to the pitch I want to get to.

So does anybody have any experience octive pedals or pitch shifting pedals or both?* Does anybody have any experience of either the BOSS OC-3 Super Octave Guitar Effects Pedal or the Boss PS-6 Harmony Effects Pedal.* Or does somebody have an alternative pedal suggestion that will do what I'm looking to achieve - raise the pitch of the note I'm playing without having to control the pedal like the Digitech pedal, but by basically turning the pedal on and I raise the pitch of my not,

Would you suggest that I look at a different brand to BOSS and if so why?

I know it's a long question and a lot of ranting for not many pedals or questions, but it's not so easy to explain what I want to be able to do.* So any and all help and feedback is appreciated.
 
#2 ·
Jeez, that's an awful lot of text for what seems to be asking for toggle-able pitch shifter.

Boots Paul has some sort of amazing pitch shifting device. I think it's the Morpheus DropTune. DropTune Pedal

Edit: i just saw that at the end of War and Peace you mentioned you want to go up in pitch, not down. Looks like you'd need this one. Capo Pedal
 
#3 ·
War and Peace was a third of the length, my post was comparable to Ovid's Metamorphoses.

But cheers, I'll check out the capo pedal, I've never heard of it before, but it look all U.F.O. like, it almost matches my sexy alien tuner, that alone might be enough of a reason to buy the capo pedal.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Bloody_Inferno said:
Also add the Mooer Audio Pitch Box. It's a clone of the PS-6 (or 5 I forget) and it's much smaller than a typical Boss.

Hell, you can pretty much get the Mooer clones of your existing Boss Pedals for a real mini rig.
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These pedals have to work with US size 14 EEE boots, there is a limit to how small a pedal I can use, I have tried the Mooer stuff, I know MXR is too small for me to use comfortably, but I'll check out the Mooer pedals.

RGhoarder said:
Shitty planning on your part is no reason to be a dick to Lee for providing you with a useful answer.

Should have figured out what you needed on that pedalboard before committing to one specific board.
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I actually have a back up plan in place just in case, but it would raise too many peoples expectations, and cost a lot more than what I'm currently looking at spending, assuming I go for everything BOSS.
 
#11 · (Edited)
I don't like multi-effects processors for the simple point that if something goes wrong with the unit or the unit breaks, you have lost the use off all of your effects, with seperate pedals the rate of failure is far less, almost to the point of being xer, and the odds of every pedal failing at the same time is zero. It's old fashioned, but it's what I'm used to and familiar with.

James said:
If you want all of those features in a more compact space, how about a G System and an external expression pedal? It's got stereo outputs so you can still run to two amps as well, and built in relays that could (depending on the amps set up) do your channel switching too. I think the only thing I'd ever want to replace mine with is the next generation one, if or when they decide to produce one.
Click to expand...
It's again a multi effects processor, and I'm not a fan or them for the above reasons, I'd feel more confident and almost worry free about rig failure running pedals instead of a multi-effects processor, and if I ever decide that I want to run the pedalboard with my usual two amps, its a simple matter of plugging the output from the last pedal in the chain into the input of an ABY pedal, and the out puts from the ABY pedal into the input of each amp head. With my current setup of running two pedalboards into two amps, my ABY pedal is not on any pedalboard, it's actually before both of them in my signal chain, my signal chain is as follows:

_______________________________->Wah Wah -> PeddalBoard A -> DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal -> Amp head 1
Guitar-> kill switch->volume pedal->ABY Pedal
________________________________-> Pedalboard B -> Amp head 2

Each amp head is connected to two 4 by 12 straight closed back cabs.

Technically speaking the Volume pedal, ABY pedal, Wah Wah Pedal, and the DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal are not or I dont really consider them to be part of a pedalboard because they are simply not physically located on a pedal board, but in the case of the Wah Wah pedal, and the DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal they are located physically next to the pedalboard, in this case pedalboard A. I know it's probably not the optimum setup to have, but it's what I'm used to, and have used since my teens, plus it has redundancy built into it, well redundancy for everything except the Wah Wah pedal and the DigiTech Whammy 5th Generation Guitar Effects Pedal, and it has the abality to make me sound like I'm playing up to four guitars at the same time, plus it produces a 'wall of sound' and moves a lot of air.

For example I can have the distortion pedal active on pedalboard A, but not active on pedalboard B so I produce both a clean and dirty tone at the same time, so to the lay person watching me play, or the average puter at the club I gig at, it sounds like I'm playing two different guitars at the same time, it's a 'cheap' way to impress the audience watching the band play.
 
#10 ·
If you want all of those features in a more compact space, how about a G System and an external expression pedal? It's got stereo outputs so you can still run to two amps as well, and built in relays that could (depending on the amps set up) do your channel switching too. I think the only thing I'd ever want to replace mine with is the next generation one, if or when they decide to produce one.
 
1
#13 ·
I gigged regularly with a BOSS GT-6 and never had it fail on me once. It's built like a tank, and it's way more versatile than pedals.

Plus, with the GT-10 or GT-100, you can create two parallel effects chains, allowing you to re-create BOTH of your pedalboards within the one unit. For a complicated stereo setup like yours, a multi-effects unit seems like a far more logical way to go.
 
#14 ·
I've been using multi FX for over 13 years and never had a failure. I find them a lot more convenient than individual pedals as you don't have to tapdance to change sounds AND you can save multiple variations without having to adjust controls or buy a second pedal if , for example, you want two different delay settings. Plus, once they're set you never have to worry about the controls being knocked in transit.

But equally, I don't see the need to run two full stacks either. One amp and a 2x12 does me perfectly well.
 
#21 ·
I have never seen a rack fail, but I have seen complex pedal rigs totally fuck with people at the wrong time. Bad patch cables, power supplies going dead...have you ever traced a bad patch cable in a mess of pedals in front of a group of people and a band tapping their toe waiting on you, its the very reason racks exist.
 
#22 ·
Yeah, I've seen a LOT more pedalboard failures than I have rack failures. Especially those kids that like to jump around a lot.

Shit, a small travel board for me would be a Dunlop JC-95 Jerry Cantrell Signature Series Wah Pedal For Guitar into a 1981 Vintage Boss DS-1 Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal Made In Japan Serial Number 300 (three hundred) into an MXR Phase 90 Phase Guitar Effects Pedal into a Boss DD-5 Digital Delay Guitar Effects Pedal.
 
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